Fantastic Beasts and Where to Film Them

JK Rowling has completed the script for the screen version of the Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. According to Harry Potter producer David Heyman, the script is “wonderful.” From The Telepgraph:

Heyman praised Rowling's debut scriptwriting efforts: "She is so smart, and her turn of phrase, the precision of the language she uses, is a joy to behold."

Heyman's company, Heydey Films, has produced all eight of the blockbuster Harry Potter films, as well as 2013's space epic Gravity. He will work with Rowling and Warner Bros studios on the Fantastic Beasts trilogy, which is set 70 years before Hogwarts and follows the adventures of Newt Scamander, the author of the titular textbook that Harry and his classmates will later study from.

January Magazine reviewed the book when it first came out in 2001. The screen version is anticipated for 2016.

Rowling Shifts Pen to the Screen

With all of the Harry Potter movies firmly in the can, one can imagine Warner Brothers was happy to get author J.K. Rowling to sign on to adapt her Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them for the big screen. From Deadline:

Rowling says it’s not a sequel or a prequel to the Potter adventures, but will kick off in New York, 70 years before Harry’s story starts. No timeline or director has been identified yet. If the films follow the Harry Potter process, they’ll make use of Warner Bros’ Leavesden studios outside London which Warner acquired and revamped after the last Potter film was shot. Warner Bros noted today that the relationship between Rowling and the studio will be managed in London by Neil Blair of Rowling’s literary agency The Blair Partnership, and by Warner UK, Ireland and Spain chief Josh Berger.

The book was published in 2001 along with another, Quidditch Through the Ages, both intended to look and read like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts textbooks.

The books were both charming, if slight, their chief redeeming quality being that Rowling had created the brace of books as an aid to fundraising for Comic Relief, a hugely successful UK organization whose chief goal is to “create a just world free from poverty.” To that end, the web site currently says that Comic Relief has raised more than 900 million pounds that has helped thousands of individuals in 70 countries. One can imagine that a successful move to the screen for Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them will stimulate book sales once again and raise still more money for Comic Relief, which can’t be bad. Back in the real world, though, it seems likely Rowling will have another hit on her hands. And then, the following year, another still:

Fantastic Beasts will also be developed across Warner Bros’ video game, consumer products and digital initiatives businesses. As part of the newly extended relationship, Warner Bros has also boarded the BBC adaptation of Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy which goes into production next year.

Hunger Games Kicks Harry Potter to the Curb

To our knowledge, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling and Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins have never been in competition. But if they were? The latest word is that Collins would be in the lead. Forbes tells us that The Hunger Games series has passed the Harry Potter series to become the all-time bestselling series of books. From Forbes:

Although author Suzanne Collins only wrote three books, her Hunger Games trilogy has been able to zap the magic out of J.K. Rowling’s seven-part Harry Potter franchise on Amazon.com,. Taking into consideration print and digital Kindle book sales combined, The Hunger Games, which are much shorter reads than the Potter books, have captivated a wider range of fans around the globe. All of the books in the Hunger Games and Harry Potter series are available for Kindle owners with a Prime membership to borrow for free in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

See the full post here.

J.K. Rowling to Write Novel for Grown Ups

We don’t know when or where or what, we only do know that it will happen and, when it does, we don’t need to be told that the world will watch. And closely.

J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and one of the wealthiest women in the world, has announced that she’s signed a deal with Little, Brown for publication in the United Kingdom and the United States. UK publisher David Shelley will act as editor while US responsibility will fall to executive VP Michael Pietsch, who famously edited David Foster Wallace.

Though nothing has been said about title, date or anything about the book, Rowling has said that the “next book will be very different to the Harry Potter series, which has been published so brilliantly by Bloomsbury and my other publishers around the world. The freedom to explore new territory is a gift that Harry's success has brought me, and with that new territory it seemed a logical progression to have a new publisher. I am delighted to have a second publishing home in Little, Brown, and a publishing team that will be a great partner in this new phase of my writing life.”

No details -- or even hints -- about the monetary value of this deal have been announced. However when the news has spread a little wider, speculation will likely be deep.

Meanwhile, fans can expect more details about the upcoming project over the coming months.

January Magazine’s 2000 interview with Rowling is here.

Quidditch, Anyone?

As any Harry Potter fan will tell you, Quidditch is just one of the wondrous things author J.K. Rowling devised for her magical books. But unlike many of those things, Quidditch, with its quaffles and snitches, has been brought to life. The Guardian brings us a glimpse of a match at Oxford:

To onlookers it may have seemed outlandish and bizarre, but to these mostly teenage Oxford students it was the realisation of a dream. For Quidditch, the game they grew up reading about in the pages of Harry Potter books, is no longer a fictional activity played by witches and wizards in the air. It is a fast-paced and disconcertingly rough team sport that is played firmly on the ground and results in very real cuts and bruises.

You can read about real life Quidditch here.

Children’s Books Move Successfully into the Real World

With Pottermore, the new online community based on the world of Harry Potter, preparing to go into beta, The Guardian looks at how children’s books can often lend themselves to leaching into the real world:

Pottermore may be the most ambitious attempt to extend the legacy of a children's book, but it's just the logical technological extension of a process that began when print ceased to be the sole means of mass communication. Kids' books have become radio and TV serials, feature films, cartoons, audiobooks – and now they are becoming apps, websites and more.

But isn't there a risk that all the bells and whistles take away from the original book, restricting the limits of the young reader's imagination – especially with films? "There can be the danger that the visual impact takes over," says Elv Moody, the editorial director of Classic Puffin. "But sometimes it can work the other way. Film can be a great way into a book that might have seemed too grown-up to read." She thinks this autumn's films of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and The Three Musketeers will attract a new audience to those books, and points out that Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland prompted a massive uplift in sales of Lewis Carroll's original book – even the Puffin edition, which had no film tie-in.

The full piece is here. You can’t register for Pottermore yet, but when you can, you’ll do so here.

Wizarding World of Harry Potter Will Bring Books to Life

The millions of fans who were saddened when J.K. Rowling came to the end of of her fabulous seven-book saga in 2007 can take heart: the books might be over, but the magic is far from gone. If proof of this was needed before, it isn’t anymore. Universal Studios in Orlando is currently at work on a “theme park in a theme park” called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Scheduled to *open in May, Hogwarts Castle is reportedly already rising to dominate the site. From The New York Daily News:

The venue will pack 20 acres of attractions, shops and eateries within Universal’s Islands of Adventure park.

Wizarding World’s creators worked closely with Rowling and film artists to keep the venue true to the story.

Towering over everything else, Hogwarts castle can already be seen beyond Universal’s gates. Fans know it as the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where Harry and his friends learn to perfect their magic.

The castle will host an attraction called Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey, which creators promise “will use brand-new technology to bring the magic stories and characters of the film to life in ways you’ve never experienced before.”

Universal offers a sneak peek here.

* Correction 2:15 pm, PST: We were overly optimistic when we wrote that the park-within-a-park would be open in May. As it turns out, Universal continues to be cagey with dates. However travel packages including the attraction indicate an availability date of May 28th. (Maybe they’re being optimistic, too?)

Rowling’s Originality Under Question Again

I don’t even want to think about the possibility that J.K. Rowling ripped off the work of another author in creating her beloved and top selling Harry Potter series of books. However, since everyone else is thinking about it, I don’t have to. Here are some of those links: The New York Times, Coventry Telegraph, E! Online, CBC, Sky News, Entertainment Weekly and The Daily Mail who go to the trouble of encapsulating the whole mess:

JK Rowling and her publisher are being sued for £500million for allegedly copying Harry Potter from an earlier children's book, also by an English writer.

Adrian Jacobs's book Willy The Wizard -- also about a child discovering he has magical powers - was published in 1987, ten years before the first in the Harry Potter series and three years before Miss Rowling says she came up with her idea.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling

In the final chapter of the Harry Potter tale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Hermione Granger inherited a book of wizarding children’s fairytales from Professor Dumbledore, who had known that she would be able to use the clues in the text to work out ways of defeating Voldemort. Only one of them, “The Tale of the Three Brothers,” was described in detail, because that one was important to our trio’s quest, but Ron mentioned the others and we learned that they were as familiar to them as Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are to Muggle children.

Soon after publication of that book, author J.K. Rowling actually wrote the stories mentioned in the novel, illustrating them herself, and six beautifully-bound, handwritten copies were given to friends, a seventh sold for charity and bought by Amazon. Of course, fans who were already hungry for more Potter were frustrated that they might never see these stories. However, one year later, the first mass-market edition has been published just in time for the holidays and we can all read them.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a slim, hardcover volume is the right size to fit into a child’s hands and be carried in a backpack or large pocket. It’s a visual treat, with delicately-drawn illustrations strongly reminiscent in style of Pauline Baynes, who illustrated C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books.

There are five stories, along with an introduction by the author, who never leaves the Potterverse, writing about it as if it was all true. She thanks Minerva McGonagall for allowing her to use notes by Dumbledore which are attached to each story. She gives the history of Beedle the Bard, a 15th century wizard, and comments on the difference in style between wizard and Muggle fairy tales. The only mention of the real world here is the fact that the book is being used to raise money for the children’s charity, the Children’s High Level Group, founded by Rowling herself. There’s also an afterword by Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, who has worked with Rowling on this charity.

The stories (“translated from the original runes by Hermione Granger”) are “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot,” “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” “Babbitty Rabbitty and Her Cackling Stump” and, of course, “The Tale of the Three Brothers.” All of the stories have a moral and -- in case we didn’t notice it -- each is accompanied by notes by Professor Dumbledore. These notes mention that some of the stories which show Muggles in a favourable light (“The Wizard and the Hopping Pot”) or feature Muggle-wizard marriage (“The Fountain of Fair Fortune”) have been banned in the past or re-written. Some of the notes are hilarious, such as Dumbledore’s reminiscence about Hogwarts’s only attempt to put on a school show, a pantomime version of “The Fountain of Fair Fortune,” in which the students in the lead roles got into fights, a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship broke up and the Great Hall nearly burned down. The teacher involved eventually moved to the wizarding world’s version of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, but never produced that pantomime again. The mind boggles at the image of wizard actors, but it opens that universe just a little more for us.

There is a certain poignancy, not to mention irony, in the notes attached to the final tale. For example, Dumbledore admits he might be tempted by Death’s more dangerous gifts, even knowing, as he does, that you can’t really bring anyone back from the dead. It also makes you think more deeply about some of the final events of Deathly Hallows.

The stories are charming and have the flavour of fairytales, but you really do need to be familiar with the universe that Rowling has created to appreciate them. There’s no point, for example, in giving them to children to read before they’ve read the Harry Potter books. It’s a spinoff, just like Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and Quidditch Through The Ages.

A good choice to complete your Harry Potter collection. It barely needs reviewing for the hungry fan, but it’s well worth buying.

Barclay 1, Potter 0

I got in a spot of bother with a post about Harry Potter last year, from which you can gather I have probably been struck off J.K. Rowling’s Christmas card list. However I am definitely a fan of the United Kingdom’s currently bestselling book: Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye. I am pleased to see that, despite having Harry Potter and his cabal of friends making a nuisance of himself in the UK book charts, Canadian Linwood Barclay has seen off the pesky schoolboy wizard, as reported by The Bookseller:

Linwood Barclay’s No Time For Goodbye (Orion) has retained top spot for a second week with a 56,291 weekly sale, up 2,354 week-on-week. Barclay achieved the feat despite competition from the paperback release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Bloomsbury), which became the fastest selling book of all time upon its release in hardback last year.

The children's edition of J.K. Rowling’s seventh Harry Potter instalment sold 37,644 copies through the market at an average selling price of just £1.96 - 78.2% off its £8.99 r.r.p.

Note that neither Orion Publishing or Linwood Barclay didn’t need the heavy -- and in some cases suicidal -- discounting that Bloomsbury and Harry Potter enjoy. However in fairness, Barclay does owe a great deal to having his UK debut being selected as a Richard and Judy book.

New Harry, Says Telegraph

The new Harry Potter? Yeah: that’s gonna happen. The Telegraph has the latest contender:

Two British authors behind a publishing phenomenon that could take over from Harry Potter have landed a million-dollar Hollywood film contract.

Tunnels, by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams, has been snapped up by the film investment company behind 3.10 to Yuma, starring Russell Crowe, and The Spiderwick Chronicles.

OK so, yeah yeah: we know you don’t get to be first by following along. The best I’m hoping for here is “not stinky.” (But don’t let my cynicism cloud the issue.) Although the premise does sound pretty cool:

Now the co-authors are looking forward to seeing a big-budget version of their novel, which follows the adventures of Will Burrows, a 10-year-old boy who finds a secret world in a series of tunnels beneath the garden of his suburban London home.

However, self-publishers will want to sit up and take notice:

A couple of years ago the pair, who have been friends since college days, remained unpublished. They started in 2005 by self-publishing 2,500 copies and hawking them around booksellers.

Last year The Daily Telegraph exclusively published extracts from Tunnels just before it hit the bookstands.

But now they have earned £500,000 in advance royalties, with in excess of $1 million (£500,000) to come from the movie deal once filming starts.

And sometimes we wonder why people self-publish? That’s why: the big successes are rare, but they’re just so bloody dramatic.

Anyway, it’s a fun story, and it’s here.

“Wholesale Theft,” Charges Rowling

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling was in court in New York yesterday, hot on the heels of a Michigan-based company that is trying to publish an encyclopedia based on the magical world Rowling has created. According to The New York Times:

Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers Entertainment, which produces the Harry Potter films, are suing RDR Books, a small Michigan publisher, to stop the publication of Steven Vander Ark’s “Harry Potter Lexicon,” an encyclopedia based on Mr. Vander Ark’s popular Web site of the same name.

Ms. Rowling argued on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan that the proposed encyclopedia -- she has read the manuscript -- is a copyright infringement and is little more than an alphabetical form of plagiarism.

RDR Books, of course, has a different take on the matter:

What she denounced as plagiarism and a waste of money, the publisher defended as literary scholarship and an invaluable tool for Harry Potter readers, similar to a Shakespeare concordance, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the dictionary and other reference books. Ms. Rowling said the manuscript was “sloppy, lazy,” riddled with errors and motivated by the publisher’s and author’s realization that it could bring “a fast buck.”

Though aspects of the proceedings are quite serious, some fictional silliness was bound to sneak in here and there:

Everyone except Ms. Rowling seemed to be competing for the wittiest Harry Potter references.

When her lawyer, Dale Cendali, spoke Lord Voldemort’s name -- known to everyone who has ever read a Potter book as “he who must not be named” -- she quickly said, “Forgive me for speaking the name.”

And Mr. Falzone, the defense lawyer, suggested in his opening statement that Ms. Rowling was trying to exert a bit of the dark arts herself, by testing whether she “has the power to make the Lexicon disappear from our world.”

The case, which is likely to run all week, is being heard by U.S. District Court Judge Robert P. Patterson without a jury.

The New York Times piece is here. Hecklerspray gets a bit fun and silly here, while The Scotsman offers up just the facts here.

Harry Potterland (RowlingWorld?) Here We Come

The world is abuzz today with the news that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh book in J.K. Rowling’s übberbestselling Harry Potter series will be split into -- count ‘em -- not one, but two films. As told by E-Online:

And for his final trick, Harry Potter will split himself in two.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book from J.K. Rowling's mega-selling series, will be made into not one, but two, movies.

As first reported Wednesday by the Los Angeles Times, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I will hit theaters in November 2010, to be followed six months later, in Kill Bill and Matrix fashion, by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II in May 2011.

The thing I don’t get about this is: why all the big surprise? After all, if faced with the final episode of what has also been an übberbestselling movie franchise, and you suddenly sense the possibility of making two, two, two films instead of just the one -- thereby reaping the rewards on two moves -- well… it ain’t brain surgery, is it? (And, let’s face it, most of these Hollywood types appear not to be brain surgeons.)

There aren’t too many slouches at The Guardian. They got all the implications and ramifications right away:

It might have been called Harry Potter and the Eternal Sequel. Faced with the last in a series of books that ended with a climactic showdown, the producers of the $4.5bn-and-counting Harry Potter film franchise did what came naturally: they decided to turn the final installment into two films.

And they have the schedule pretty much set:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I will come out in November 2010, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II will appear the following May.

One would suspect, then, that the two films will be made like one, big giant movie, then released half a year apart. Especially since, let’s face it, at 18, the star Daniel Radcliffe isn’t getting any younger.

Releasing the two films near the same time will also provide other opportunities:

The double release will also help sustain marketing activities, including a theme park opening in Florida next year; and it means the two final films will be eligible for the 2011 and 2012 Oscars respectively.

It really is a small world. After all.

Quidditch for Muggles

Let’s say you want to play Quidditch, the high-paced, high-flying game featured in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Let’s say you wanted to play, but were hampered by the fact that -- oh... I don’t know -- you have zero magical powers and you lack the ability to fly. Take heart: it turns out these shortcomings might not be the deal breaker they first seem.

According to Sarah Hinckley of the Rutland Herald, the sport of quidditch is growing like magic (ahem) on campuses in eastern United States:

As the setting sun spun red light, similar to the streak of a flying bludger ball, onto the Middlebury College campus, the Mollywobbles celebrated victory and geared up to capture a championship cup. “We played really well out there today,” said team captain Charlie Hoffman. “We went out there and surprised a lot of teams. Hit ‘em low and hit ‘em hard.”

On November 15th, the first Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup Fall Festival took place at Middlebury College in Vermont. Though thus far only Middlebury and Vassar have Quidditch teams, though Green Mountain College is currently putting one together. Others will no doubt follow.

Quidditch as played by American muggles was created by Middlebury junior Xander Manshel when he was a freshman. Manshel told the Addison County Independent that he “designed some rules that would work without magical forces, without an ability to fly.”

Don’t Hold Breath for New Book by J.K Rowling

Headlines today that J.K. Rowling has finished her first work since the completion of her Harry Potter saga are overstating the point. The Tales of Beedle the Bard are mentioned in the final Harry Potter book and actually play an important role. But don’t get too excited: Rowling has only created seven copies. Rowling has said that working on the book had been therapeutic for her According to The Times Online:

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have loved and lived in for 17 years,” she said.

Handwritten and illustrated by Rowling herself, “the seven copies have been bound in brown morocco leather and mounted with silver and semi-precious stones,” The Times reported.

A single copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be available for purchase: but don’t get your hopes up:

The volume will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on December 13 with a starting price of £30,000. Proceeds will go to The Children’s Voice, a charity that helps vulnerable children across Europe.

The other six copies, Rowling says, will be given away as gifts.

Meanwhile, GalleyCat reports that Rowling is nixing companion Harry Potter-related books and Web sites wherever her powers will allow. “Why?” GalleyCat asks a little facetiously, I thought. “Because Rowling believes she can squeeze at least one more book out of the franchise, a ‘definitive’ encyclopedia with ‘new material’ that wasn’t in the books, which no doubt means more of her personal interpretations of the storyline like last month’s revelation that she knew Dumbledore was gay, even if you didn’t.”

Except that, since the entire Harry Potter world is Rowling’s “interpretation,” she gets to play that card. And we’ll stand in line to listen.

Rowling Pulls Dumbledore from the Closet

JK Rowling’s revelation that Albus Dumbledore is gay is creating a firestorm. Some groups are applauding the author of the bestselling Harry Potter books for outing the fictional headmaster of Hogwart’s School. Others... not so much.

Rowling dropped her bomb last night in New York at Carnegie Hall at an event hosted by MSNBC news anchor Keith Olbermann. Entertainment Weekly’s blog reported today:

Responding to a question from a child about Dumbledore’s love life, Rowling hesitated and then revealed, “I always saw Dumbledore as gay.” Filling in a few more details, she said, “Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald.... Don’t forget, falling in love can blind us. [He] was very drawn to this brilliant person. This was Dumbledore’s tragedy.” She added that in a recent meeting about the sixth movie, she spied a line in the script where Dumbledore waxed poetic about a girl, so she was forced to scribble director David Yates a note to correct the situation.

Predictably, the airwaves have today been abuzz and atwitter with the news. “Welcome to out of the closet Dumbledore,” said the Gay Socialites blog, “Where’s your PEOPLE magazine cover?”

While the Red State blog rambled on incoherently for a while under a headline that summerizes the gist: “Turns Out Dumbledore Was More Flawed Than I Thought.”

CBC Arts today reported that “Harry Potter fans have long speculated over Dumbledore’s sexuality, in part because of his mysterious past and lack of ties with female characters.” Which is certainly a bit of speculation I never heard a hint of (maybe I don’t hang out at the right watercoolers?)

And according to Ireland Online, “A spokesman for gay rights group Stonewall said: ‘It’s great that JK has said this. It shows that there’s no limit to what gay and lesbian people can do, even being a wizard headmaster.’”

Albus Dumbledore was portrayed by Richard Harris in the first two movies in the successful franchise. Upon Harris’ death in 2002, the role was played by Michael Gambon.

That Potter Story Has Legs

Since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released last Saturday, it’s felt as though editors everywhere have been saying “If it reads, it leads.”

Who can blame them? After a decade of ever-escalating stories about the boy wizard and his Titian-haired creator, reporters are looking at a hole where Harry used to be. Best to fill it while there's still a story to be told.

Though the Harry Potter story certainly has legs, some of the connections being made are... well... more tenuous than others. For example, Pink News UK tells us about the lesbian reading material on a bookcase behind Rowling in one of the author’s bio shots.

A closer examination of the image gives us an insight into Rowling's own reading material. Assuming it's her bookcase of course.

After all, it could be her bookcase. But then again... maybe not.

And while some publications are going for the big reach, others have settled for the blatantly obvious. For example, The Atlantic’s Ross Douthat reports that, while some people hate Harry Potter, some people... um... don’t.

There have always been two critical camps on the Harry Potter phenomenon -- the small band of haters, which includes Harold Bloom, A.S. Byatt, and lesser lights like Ron Charles, and the host of apologists, which includes more or less everybody else. I'm a card-carrying member of the latter group; I’m not a Potter obsessive by any stretch, having read each book only once, but I am a great admirer of Rowling’s work, and I’ve always thought that that her skill as a storyteller and world-builder outweighs her literary weaknesses.

I found Douthat’s Rowling assessment somewhat sour grapsey, but to help you to draw your own conclusions, the piece is here.

The business section of The Times Online skates on thin ice connecting Potter mania to book collecting.

The first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was limited to only 500 copies in hardback and over 1,000 in paperback. As a result, a signed copy of a first-edition hardback (which sold for £10.99 in 1997) notched up a world record of £27,370 at Bloomsbury Auctions in London in May this year.

In fairness, part of the sour grapes over this one might be mine: I owned a first edition Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and did not keep it. I console myself with my signed copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Though The Times brings us to book collecting through the lens of Harry Potter, it widens that lens throughout the piece, bringing us a full, if brief, view of collecting books.

Star examples include Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon from 1930 (more than £35,000), and Agatha Christie’s first Poirot novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, from 1921 (more than £20,000) and HG Wells’s The First Men in the Moon from 1901 (£12,000).

Perhaps the ultimate is the first issue of Ulysses by James Joyce from 1922. It was published in various limited states but the rarest was 100 copies on special paper, signed by Joyce. These can now fetch more than £150,000.

The piece ends with some general collecting advice, including, “Go for the first edition of the first book by an author who later becomes popular.” That’s the trick though, isn’t it? And if you have the secret to ferreting out the author who will be popular, there are a lot of agents, editors and publishers who would like to hear from you.

India’s Economic Times goes all literary critic when they ask the unbylined question, “Wanna know the real secret of Potter’s success?” In yet another business-writer-turns-armchair-psychologist attempt at breaking down the Potter phenomenon, the Economic Times lays it all out for us. Simple like, so we don't miss it:

As more individuals experience the product, the benefit to others increases, lifting the incentive to experience the product even more. Woe be unto the poor child who showed up at elementary school in 1999 without a thorough knowledge of wizards and muggles. Such social pressures fired demand, which lured parents into reading the book with their children.

Oh... that’s what is was. And here we thought it was just because a lot of people liked Rowling’s books. Wrong, says Economic Times:

There are many works of art that are equally as entertaining as the Harry Potter books. Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy is as enjoyable, and perhaps more imaginative. But Potter scored the big prize. Why? Clearly, the artistry of Rowling is an important element explaining Potter's success, but the changing economics of the ‘new’ economy clearly plays a role as well.

Of course, the big news since the seventh and final Harry Potter novel was released five days ago has been all about numbers. You’ll have seen some of these stories already: the Harry Potter books are expected to eclipse sales of The Bible. The films will outsell even the mega-hit Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises. No one has sold more books in as many places as J.K. Rowling.

I will remember this moment. I think I’ll remember it all my life: this excitement, this hoopla, this loss of perspective and balance. I will remember the week during the summer of 2007 when everything else was pushed from our minds. When, for a heartbeat, we forgot about limits, we adjusted our sights. And we thought about possibilities and about magic and the fictional orphan who touched so many lives.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

With the end of the embargo on the seventh and final book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, January Magazine contributing editor Sue Bursztynski got right to work.

As a children’s librarian and the author of several books for young readers, Bursztynski can see the flaws in Rowling’s final installment. However, she’s quick to point out that they’re not fatal flaws: she came away feeling satisfied that most of the loose bits had been tied up. Says Bursztynski:

Rowling warned us that there would be deaths and the first occurs while Harry is being escorted to the Burrow. Another character loses an ear. By the end of the book, there are more bodies than in the last scene of Hamlet. In previous books, the author killed beloved characters one at a time and left Harry time to mourn. In Deathly Hallows, they are killed en masse, mostly offstage, and there is simply no time to mourn.

The full review is here.

What’s That You’re Reading?

I confess, I picked this lead up from Duane Swierczynski at the Secret Dead Blog. The brilliant and brash contributors to a Web site called Pointless Waste of Time have concocted a variety of manly looking book jackets for those folks who want to read the new Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but don’t want to be seen doing so in public. Some of the specimens offered are pretty outrageous, and a few will absolutely make you persona non grata at your local Starbucks. But, the site reassures visitors, “Print these out and you can safely read your Potter in front of all those ex-Navy SEALS at the local strip club.” And isn’t that what’s really important?


The main assortment of Harry Potter cover-ups is available here, while some equally fine rejects (one of which I have borrowed above) can be found here.

A Little Touch of Harry in the Night

I know it’s been “All Harry All The Time” this week at January Magazine. And, perhaps like you, I’m getting weary of the hype. It certainly didn’t help matters that I spent nearly 10 hours today in U.S. airports trying to fly home from a business trip, and heard endless CNN reports about Pottermania on both sides of the Atlantic. I’ve never cracked open a Harry Potter book, so I can’t speak personally about the series ending. My wife and stepchildren, however, are big fans, and Leslie will pick up her copy from a favorite independent bookstore while she visits her parents this weekend.

Still, I found myself in a local chain bookstore on Friday evening, enjoying the air of anticipation as well over a hundred children waited for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

You can’t spend time this weekend in a bookstore and not be captivated by it all. Think of it: This weekend, in the middle of summer, children in North America, the United Kingdom and who knows where else, will put aside their iPods, PlayStations and DVDs. They will take a break from text messaging, instant messaging and chat rooms. They will curl up with a book. A book they’ve anxiously awaited for months. They will talk to their friends about it, and they will debate the relative merits of the book, compared to its predecessors in the series, or perhaps in contrast to other books they’ve read.

Isn’t this what it’s really all about? Connecting with a fictional world and putting aside everything else?

Maybe Harry and his friends don’t appeal to you -- fine. I’m in the same boat. Still, I plan on emulating my young friends this weekend. I’m going to get lost in a book.