Apparently, a discount book distributor started shipping copies of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows a few days earlier than it should have:
Forget Voldemort. Yesterday Harry Potter fans fearful of spoilers went offline, underground and incommunicado as book publisher Scholastic confirmed that about 1,200 copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” erroneously had been mailed early to readers.
Scholastic cited a breach in the on-sale agreement by the distributor, Levy Home Entertainment, and DeepDiscount.com, a customer of the distributor. The publishing company is planning to take legal action, it said in a statement yesterday. The books represented one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the total U.S. copies scheduled to go on sale Saturday.
Even some mainstream news organizations got in on the action. Yesterday the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun posted reviews of “Deathly Hallows,” which some readers protested contained key plot elements. More than 50 angry fans immediately protested the Sun’s review on the paper’s Web site: “Why ruin it for the rest of us?! OMG, So not fair!” wrote one Potterite, identified only as HP4ever.
Tim Franklin, editor of the Sun, said the paper had “obtained the book legally” — the relative of a newsroom employee had ordered a copy from DeepDiscount, and passed it on when it arrived early. “There was a lot of debate and discussion over whether we would publish the review,” Franklin said. “Ultimately we decided that it was news.”
Umm, well, it’s only news because you say it’s news and because you’ve decided to get sucked into Scholastic’s media frenzy. But, well, never mind.
Among those receiving an early copy of the book were Vodkapundit’s Will Collier, who talked about it here and here:
One copy of the book landed on the doorstep of William Collier, an Atlanta engineer who, though only a casual Harry reader, had ordered an advance copy of “Deathly Hallows” off DeepDiscount. When the book arrived four days early, Collier took immediate and responsible action: He placed it on sale on eBay with a reserve price of $250. Collier said the book was purchased yesterday by an editor at Publisher’s Weekly. Editors at Publisher’s Weekly could not be reached for comment.
In lieu of further details, Collier responded by offering for $300 a written account of his story, which he’d sentimentally titled, “I Was an eBay Voldemort.” The Washington Post declined.
Fortunately, National Review accepted and it makes for entertaining reading.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
[...] I wrote earlier today about Will Collier being catapulted into the frenzy surrounding the early release of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. [...]