As great as the Harry Potter books are, the legend of author J. K. Rowling might be even more magical for aspiring writers.

It goes something like this:

A single mother on welfare writes a novel about a wizard boy in an English coffee shop while her infant daughter sleeps by her side. The book becomes a bestseller, as do the ones that follow. The author is now a world-famous billionaire living happily ever after in a lovely mansion with a good husband and three children.

Meanwhile, the books--intended for children--are so beloved that grown men plot to sell stolen copies of the latest installment of her book to newspapers for outrageous sums of money.

For writers, the J. K. Rowling story is a powerful one. Not only does it involve a coffee-shop lifestyle and a sleeping child (something that rarely happens in the real world), but it also mixes in fame, a movie franchise, and a humongous fortune. No sane wannabe would say no to that.

So what's to stop the next hopeful writer among us from becoming the next J. K. Rowling?

For starters, there are about 265 million things standing in the way. That's how many books Rowling had sold by 2004 (the latest numbers I could find). That sort of thing doesn't happen very often, especially to a children's author. The last time sales like this happened was with the Goosebumps series, a collection of about 80 books that has sold 220 million copies since 1992.

In a way, though, this is comparing apples to oranges or ghosts to wizards, because Rowling's series will stop with seven books. Also, the vast Goosebumps library is nowhere near as literary or complex--you probably won't see adults reading these books during their lunch hours.

For those reasons, Rowling's success is arguably more significant. While there is some debate on this point, the Harry Potter books might have even boosted the entire children's book industry, which, between the economy and a diminishing interest in reading overall, is otherwise struggling.

So the fantasy of being the next J. K. Rowling is probably just that. What she accomplished is every bit as magical and mysterious as her books.

For the rest of us mortals, just getting published is the challenge, in part due to the entrée of celebrities like Katie Couric, Madonna, Paul McCartney, and others to the genre. Whether or not they can write, they have name recognition that helps sell books--lots of them. 

Call me grumpy, but I think it's probably not worth asking whether you--or anyone--could be the next J. K. Rowling. The odds of having your own messenger owl and a turbocharged broomstick are probably just as good.

That said, there's a better question to ask yourself: Could you write books for kids at all?