I'm not gonna dwell on the numbers; whether it's a quarter of a million shipped out by Amazon on Saturday or an initial print run of almost four million, Harry Potter is pretty damned huge.

I'm also not going to comment on the quality of the writing. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and even if the books were unadulterated crap (and I don't think they are), the fact that so many people care means something.

Books, the ugly stepchild of the mass media, finally have an event outside of John Grisham and all those faceless "be a kick-ass manager" books. Harry Potter, a character aimed at kids, has also captured a big adult audience. And this can only be good for the future of the written word.

The last few years, there has been a lot of speculation about the future of books. Large publishing houses kept merging, established authors found themselves without homes and quality young authors weren't getting the deals they deserved. Then there's the notion of electronic publishing and how that will revolutionize the industry. Literary types are pessimistic by nature (or, at least, they glory in pessimistic forecasts), and the news out of New York and other publishing centers has been relentlessly bleak. Being an aspiring author type myself, I pay attention to these moans and groans.

And I think they're all crap.

Not unlike the current freakout over mp3 and other electronic music files. Yes, change is happening. No, the world isn't ending. People still want music and (a few) people still want books. The format is irrelevant.

The Harry Potter phenomenon can only help the status of books. Yeah, a lot of publishers will be looking for the "next Harry Potter," publishing all sorts of crappy swords and sorcery books aimed at kids. Those are doomed to fail, though if anyone makes money it will be the publishers.

What is important is that the kids currently reading Harry Potter will look for other things to read. Maybe not this weekend, but someday. There is an intrinsic joy in reading. It exercises the imagination and works the mind in a multitude of ways. Just like going to the gym, except for the brain.

Harry Potter's popularity also makes reading a somewhat less dorky activity. Alright, in terms of the cool factor it'll never match up to skipping class to catch a smoke in the janitor's closet, but that's okay. It was college before I found a group of people who were interested in talking about books they read for fun. Many of today's kids are chopping a decade off that timetable.

So hurray for Harry. Some of the kids currently hooked on the exploits of a sorcerer in training will end up reading my books in a few years. And they'll read a lot more. It doesn't matter if they're reading them as regular paper books, as part of some electronic apparatus or in some way I can't even imagine right now. They'll be reading. And even if only a quarter, or a tenth, of Harry readers go on to become hardcore bookaholics, that'll be enough to keep scribes like me working.

Jon Worley plans to get a novel published in the next 10 years or so. He's not in a big hurry or anything.