: Re: Will people always compare a magic school idea to Harry Potter? My story includes a magic school wherein students aged 12 learn magic. The sorting Is based on abilities, Meaning that if a student

@Courtney562

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Depends on how long they've been reading.
When I first saw the Harry Potter books and movies, I compared them to Ursula K. LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, a significant fraction of which centered around Ged's time in the School of Wizards on Roke ("at the center of the world"). In today's world, however, there are probably a hundred times as many people who have read the Potter books or seen the movies, as who have read the excellent Earthsea books. Others might think of the correspondence course from Bedknob and Broomstick either the two books, or the Disney movie that combined them. Or Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle, though the school was very much a minor side note in that. Brakebill's, the college in The Magicians, was billed as "Harry Potter but for adults". And never mind that the only similarity was a school dedicated to teaching magic.
But with a series that went above and beyond those (including the ones that were decades earlier -- Earthsea dates to the 1960s and Bedknob and Broomstick to the 1950s) to become a multi-billion dollar franchise, there's no way to avoid the comparison. If you want to distinguish yourself from Potter and Hogwarts, you need a more different world -- not just Hogwarts with twelve houses and more elective coursework.

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