Harry Potter and the Dubious Hullaballoo
It is the final count-down week before the release of the seventh Harry Potter volume, and a sudden uproar has appeared upon the horizon. The circus has come to town. According to the tale, libraries have allegedly been given a special dispensation to un-crate the books in advance for early cataloguing. Someone has reputedly stolen a library copy, and, with the help of a digital camera is uploading it to the internet as fast as they can save the files - a whole week early!
Well, okay. I have drifted along happily enough for the past couple of years, letting this page sit online as a DeadJournal giving myself a base, and an online identity from which to post responses in other people's Journals. But this pretty much dictates that I finally post something here of my own.
I can’t very well do it over on Red Hen, since, first; the collection over there isn't really that flexible or designed for any kind of direct feedback, and, second; The Red Hen collection has now gone under it's blanket moratorium until Halloween. I’ve given it my best shot, and my guesses and theories are either right, or partially right, or I have been taking another scenic cruise down the Martian canals. If that is the case, you are all welcome to point and laugh.
And by this weekend you may have the opportunity to point and laugh at this post as well. Because I am going out on a limb here, and we may all soon find out if the fat lady bounces. But I want to get this out in public before the weekend in the event that I am right.
I say the leaked “spoiler novel” is a hoax.
My conclusion is not exactly a shot in the dark, nor is it a simple side trip down that river in Egypt (bookings to Mars being rather hard to come by this season). There appears to be a whole Playfair-compliant trail of evidence leading up to it.
If I am correct, JK Rowling, in company with Arthur Levine of Scholastic have led the fans a merry dance, with a big reveal of the joke scheduled for either the weekend of the 7th book’s release, or very soon afterwards. I do not know how many other people are in on the game, but I would hazard a guess that there are several. Quite possibly including Melissa Aneli and Emerson Spartz of the Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet, respectively, who have been instrumental in dispensing the clues to the fandom, although their participation may have been unwitting.
I admit that my inner conspiracy theorist often needs a firm reigning in, and this does appear to be turning into one of the occasions that might call for that. But IF this was an inside job, that would explain how they got all the details right.
Because the details all seem absolutely, and unmistakably, right. I have not seen the pirated book in toto, but I have seen some of the shots, specifically the opening page, the Table of Contents, and the purported Epilogue.
If this is a hoax from anyone other than Scholastic themselves, there is no guarantee that the real book will have the same physical features. The real book may not have red end papers, a golden yellow spine binding, and sort of a greenish-grey binding cloth (that color may be a distortion from the light source in the photographs, the actual color seems neutral enough for it to be possible that there is some degree of color shift). If it is an in-house hoax from Scholastic, it almost certainly will.
What clinches it for me as being from Scholastic is the artwork. I have only seen four of the “pirate” copy’s chapter head illos. The one at the opening of chapter 1, and the one at the opening of the epilogue, plus two others that were posted separately, the one for chapter 7, and the one for chapter 23. If those illos are not Mary GrandPre’s own art I will eat my Hat (those of you who attended Lumos will no doubt remember that Hat). And I very much doubt that the rest of the chapter head illos in the photographed book are suddenly in some other artist's style.
Now, who is most likely to have 37 fresh, new, highly recognizable pieces of Mary GrandPre’s chapter head art just lying around unused?
So, if all the details are right, why do I question the authenticity of the pirate copy?
Because, as usual with anything associated with Rowling, the numbers don’t add up.
They quite literally do not add up.
Months ago Scholastic announced to the whole world that the U.S. edition of JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ was going to weigh in at 784 pages. In the Scholastic editions that is 784 pages of story, not 784 pages of book. The Scholastic editions have always begun the numbered pages of the story at the opening of the first chapter with “page 1” and go straight through to the end. I do not expect them to suddenly change that pattern now. No one paid a lot of attention to the page count of the first three books, but Goblet of FIre was 734 numbered pages of story. Order of the Phoenix is 870, Half-Blood Prince is 652.
Over on Mugglenet, even as I type, there is a link to an interview with Jim Dale which reiterates that the ink-and-paper edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ weighs in at 784 pages.
Does the pirate copy weigh in at 784 pages? It does not. It tops out at 759 pages. 759 pages is not 784 pages. Not even if you are JK Rowling.
I also would briefly like to ask; why photograph the book rather than scan it? Wouldn't it have been easier to read if you slapped it on a flatbed and scanned the pages? But I suppose at the size of the standard Scholastic hardcover edition you would have had to scan each page individually, rather that shoot the whole spread, which may well have been a consideration. But I really do suspect that photographing the book was done for verisimilitude. We saw the book. We saw the red end papers and the gold spine binding. We saw an actual book.
Now, it has been suggested that Scholastic may have fibbed about the real book’s page count. But lying to the entire public about your product is just not good business. Besides, that argument is putting the cart before the horse. Despite the obvious appearance of the pirate copy’s being a Scholastic product, Scholastic has not acknowledged it, nor have they made any announcement of their book having managed to get away from them a week before its scheduled release. So far as I can ascertain, where Scholastic is concerned, the pirate copy is not their product, it does not exist.
So, why should they have done this?
Well, I think it all comes down to “for fun and profit”. Amazon may not be making any money off of this book but Scholastic is. I think they could afford it. Print a limited edition with everyone in on the joke to get a copy, and probably a box of them to Rowling. And if you ever get a chance at one ouy might want to consider it. Highly collectable, after all.
But the emphasis is probably on the “fun” end of the scale. And that’s where Rowling comes in. It all may just be my inner conspiracy theorist gettng out of control, but I think that a decoy story turned loose by a publishing house which stands to make a bomb, and a very wealthy and famous author with a demonstrated apreciation for the idea of practical jokes is easier to believe than that the publishing house should lie about their book. By the time they made their page count announcement they knew how long the 7th volume was going to be.
I do think they might, between them, have decided to underwrite a limited edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Ballyhoo’ as a publicity stunt. It is, after all, the last hurrah for the series, as a series. Why not wind it all up with a bang?
And they certainly didn’t do it on the spur of the moment. I'm looking back over a phantom trail that stretches for nearly a year.
So, about that trail of evidence:
They do seem to have played fair with us. All of the clues were out there in public, all easily accessible. And Rowling, or somebody, seems to have made sure that the links to them would all reach her fans. Either from her own official website or from the big news sites to whom she has given Fan Site awards on the official site.
I am inclined to think the inception for the stunt took place around the time of Rowling’s appearance with Stephen King and John Grisholm in the ‘Harry, Carrie and Garp’ presentation at the beginning of August, 2006. And I think it started with Rowling.
That particular trip was the first time the author had been on this side of the pond in a number of years. It would hardly have been astonishing for her to have looked in on her American publishers or discussed a project with them. But the thing that snags in my recollection was the beginning of that slow tease that Rowling launched regarding the forthcoming title. She claims that she had an idea for a new title while in the shower. For some months afterward there was a whole little fan-dance about the two titles. Then, suddenly she had a third title. one that was about “two vowels and a consonant” different from one of the first two. This kept everyone speculating until the final release, at winter solstice, of the official title; ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
Fairly recently on the official website she has reopened the issue of what those alternate titles were, and, somewhat curiously, she refused to answer the question. I find it difficult to think of any alternate title that is two vowels and a consonant off from “Deathly Hallows” that might actually give anything significant away, so what would be the harm in satisfying the request? “Maybe after the book is out.” Rowling tells us. Yes, I rather suspect so. In fact, I take leave to wonder whether it was only a new title that occured to Rowling in that shower.
My next scrap of maybe-evidence is far enough off-canon that I am not at all sure of the time frame, but I am pretty sure the link originally showed up on one of the major fandom news sites. To be honest, my recollection is vague enough that it may be completely out to lunch, or conflated from multiple sources, but I am not making it up. This one was an article regarding fanfic, and fanfic writers, in which, iirc, there was a brief reference to a youngster (not one whose name was familiar to me) who had actually been commissioned to write a fanfic story. I think that it was a Harry Potter fanfic story. There may well have been a mention of Deathly Hallows in the article, which would put it around January at the earliest, but I will not swear to that. There was no mention of Rowling’s involvement, and she was not quoted in the article, so I doubt that it is to be found upon any of the Rowling interview sites.
If this is the case, and that unassuming little blurb was a shout-out that one lucky fan was commissioned to write a Harry Potter story, the pirate copy may well be that story. If so, the fan was probably paid on a work-for-hire basis, and Scholastic owns the copyright. The kid will get her day in the sun in the big reveal this weekend.
Which brings us to Mary GrandPre. Like I say, that artwork looks absolutely genuine. We’ve had a number of interviews posted with the artist since the book went into production. Most recently we got one in which Ms GrandPre turned loose some rather interesting information.
Typically, she tells us, the illustrator of a book owns their own work. It’s copyright, and the artist holds the copyright. With Scholastic, and Harry Potter, it’s different. Scholastic wanted more control. They bought and own the copyright. The artist gets name recognition and her fee.
Which means that Scholastic can do anything they want with that artwork. Use it for publicity materials, put it on their stationary, use it to illustrate work by other authors, pretty much anything.
And then we start getting the build-up to turning the whole thing loose. Here, over the last month before the official release, all of a sudden the key players involved in the stunt are all pointed out in the public eye. We get the fairly predictable flurry of interviews and appearances by Rowling. But Levine is also abruptly in the news with a fairly lengthy interview, and GrandPre is interviewed on several different occasions.
And now the hook is gradually readied to reel us all in.
This stage of the proceedings was launched some months ago when Rowling posted her request to please not spoil the fun for others on her website. That was fair enough, even though she couldn’t have held much hope of the request actually being granted.
The owners of Leaky and Mugglenet quickly chimed in and issued statements that they would NOT be posting spoilers on their sites if they could possibly help it. All of which served to put spoilage very much on everyone’s mind.
Then Rowling appeared on a certain Mr Ross’s talk show, which almost immediately hit the web as a YouTube file in which the issue of “spoilers” was deliberately raised and in which Ms Rowling pointed out that ALL of the novels so far had been “spoiled” before their official release (i.e., a strong suggestion that this one probably will be, too).
And then, right about the same time, a number of links went up referencing a projected documentary on Rowling and her work which is scheduled for later this year.
And Mugglenet (possibly Leaky as well) posted one, which - despite the announcement that Mugglenet would not be posting spoilers, included a “possible spoiler” warning - to an article from the Guardian alluding to to video clips from the project - in which Rowling had unquestionably taken part.
Now, I did not see these clips, but news gets around. I was told, and have heard it from too many sources to particularly doubt it, that in the course of this teaser for the documentary there was a brief shot of the opening paragraph and the first exchange of dialogue from the first chapter of the book.
Well, okay. That is the kind of thing that might very well be released with the author and publishers’ sanction as an official teaser for the book. You aren’t going to get a lot of spoilage from the opening paragraph of a book which goes on for another 783 pages.
Only... it is exactly the same opening paragraph and dialogue exchange as in the pirate copy.
Bingo.
That was the hook.
Now we sit back and wait for the big reveal of the Sting.
I cannot answer for the authenticity of the next paragraph of the pirate copy. And for that matter, I am not going to speculate farther on just how much of the pirate copy might actually be legitimate.
Those could be the real chapter titles, with the fanfic's text massaged to comply with them while the real volume 7 was undergoing the editorial process.
Those could be the legitimate chapter head illos. Or they could be a whole second set commissioned from the artist especially for the decoy. If so, it could have been set up months ago.
But I will have to say:
We have known for months that the Scholastic edition of HP & the Deathly Hallows is 784 pages.
If this book is not 784 pages, then;
it is almost guaranteed NOT to be JK Rowling's ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
Even though it may be Scholastic’s.
ETA (July 18): Oh the verse just gets worse. A second purported book has now surfaced with the same level of professionalism in appearance, the same GrandPre artwork, the same opening page of chapter 1 (And chapter title)
- and just about a completely different Table of contents. We don't get to see all of it, since we only get the last 3 pages of ToC, page 2 of which (our first page) starts at chapter 10.
HOWEVER, the page numbers in the ToC are identical to the ones in the first leaked copy. Including the Epilogue (which also has the same title as in the first copy) starting on page 753.
There is a side by side comparison of the two here:
http://community.livejournal.com/its_a_fake/7852.html?style=mine
So far as I know the whole text of this book has not been uploaded anywhere. Just the sample pages in the comparison.
Most (not all) of the chapter titles actually look a bit more plausible than in the first version. And it has a MUCH more typical title page. However, the one page of the opening to the epilogue strikes me as far less plausable, given that it directly contradicts statements actually made by Rowling. Admittedly it was in a session back during the 3-year summer and she may have changed her mind, but still. Nor does the two page opening of the purported chapter 3 strike me as a particularly likely direction for Rowling to be taking the story. Unforgivable curses used for mere convenience? I don't think so.
There is no indication of how long this version of the book or of the epilogue supposedly are, either, it would take something in the neighborhood of 30 pages of epilogue to bring it up to the 784 total, but that seems a bit in excess of the requirements.
I am frankly unconvinced that there really is a 2nd version of the complete book. I think we've got a 2-stage scam here. The page numbers for the chapters of the 2nd version are exactly the same as those of the first. If someone was producing a competing hoax copy of the book, the chapter lengths would not all fall out as the same length as those of a separate, independently produced hoax. And this would have been an easy enough thing to tweak for verisimilitude.
This version is piggy-backing on the first one, and it was designed to piggy-back on that first one. And to be seen to be piggy-backing on the first one. There is no evidence that any more of this version exists than the ToC and the sample pages shown in the side-by-side comparison.
Ergo: It is all a part of the same hoax.
Now, I agree that while there is no question that these are hoaxes, I may be barking at the moon that Scholastic is involved with it. I may end up asking Swythyv to show me how to fold newspaper hats.
But, still, the art had to have been lifted from Scholastic, and whoever lifted it seems to have lifted all of it (unless the real book has more than 37 chapters - which you have to admit is possible) and who else has this kind of resources?
ETA (July 19): Now, presumably the NY Times has weighed in with a review.
Frankly, I am bemused that the New York bloody Times would do something so “unprofessional” as to publically post a review of a forthcoming book, particularly one with such notoriously exaggerated security measures surrounding it, several days before the official release, merely on the strength of ONE distributor having broken the terms of their agreement with the publishers and shipped the book early (that much has been confirmed, evidently). Doesn’t future good will with the publishers count for anything? The review claims that the reviewer had purchased the book from an unnamed source.
Now: I found the link to this review on Mugglenet. It is no longer there. Instead there is a press release with Rowling quoted as being staggered that a newspaper would publish spoilers in the form of reviews. Frankly I am a bit staggered myself, and the swift removal of the link is no more than I would expect.
But it does make me wonder why it was there in the first place. Mugglenet and Leaky have both stated that they will not post spoilers if they can help it, and they could certainly have helped that. In fact Mugglenet helped it to the point of issuing a warning that there were spoilers in the review and had added a link to its own extracts from the review that did not contain the spoilers.
Coming on the heels of the Mugglenet link to the Guardian article and video clips with the brief teaser shot of the opening paragraph (which has now dissapeared), the whole issue of dissapearing evidence is keeping my inner conspiracy theorist awake.
All the more so in that the review lists the book as having, not the 784 pages of the retail version announced by Scholastic, but the same 759 of the “carpet book”. (The review is also dated, not July 18, the day I followed the link and read it, but today, July 19. This may not be relevant.)
The review has not yet disapeared, however. The link is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/books/19potter.html
All I can say is that if this is legitimate, then the final volume of the series has one hell of a gaping logic hole in it.
And the review claims that the page count is 759. Excuse me? The NY Times deliberately went looking for a copy of the reinforced library edition? Did they buy it from someone in a trench coat on the street? Right up to the Jim Dale blurb posted yesterday the page count of the book that any of the public will be actually purchasing is still supposedly 784.
One of the posters over on one of my discussion boards wondered whether the reviewer had read the carpet book, believed it, and upon learing that the book really had escaped early, nipped in with a review in order to scoop everyone.
ETA (July 20): The N.Y. Times is swearing up and down that their book is “genuine”.
Well, it is genuinely a book. I’ll willingly grant them that. I genuinely doubt that Rowling wrote it.
They also still claim that it has 759 pages.
A missing piece of the puzzle clicked into place on one of my discussion boards this morning. Someone on the board took the time to get out to her local public library yesterday and take a look at their copies of the books.
Every. Single. One.
...was the same length as the general release editions of those books. Same page count, same everything but the binding. There were about 4 of the 6 sitting on the shelves. Color me not surprised.
So. From the looks of things, Scholastic has never before reformatted their books for a seperate library edition. I am now inclined to doubt that they have done so this time, either. Ergo: I am now seriously doubting the existance of any 759-page “library” edition of JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
So, why should Scholastic lead us to believe that there is one?
Well, if, as I have been contending, this was an in-house hoax, they would have announced that there was one because they knew the bogus copy (copies?) was that length. The cover story is that the leaked pirate copy was allegedly stolen from a library.
And perhaps the medicine will go down smoother if we all start calling it a “prank” rather than a “hoax”.
After all, I really doubt that a lot of libraries are going to complain if their (legitimate) copies turn out to have 784 pages.
And, for the record; everything that I hear about what is in the book(s) sounds remarkably like a compendium of some of the most widely-spread fan theories - exaggerated for effect. I know that the opening page of the epilogue of the “2nd version” in the side-by-side comparison read to me like a shout-out salute to Knight2King. Next I will be expecting to be told that the Sorting Hat is a Horcrux, after all.
That this 759-page version of the book actually exists does appear to be fairly conclusive. I just do not believe that it was written by JK Rowling.
And I will continue to disbelieve it until my copy gets delivered tomorrow, and it turns out to have 759 pages.
Well, okay. I have drifted along happily enough for the past couple of years, letting this page sit online as a DeadJournal giving myself a base, and an online identity from which to post responses in other people's Journals. But this pretty much dictates that I finally post something here of my own.
I can’t very well do it over on Red Hen, since, first; the collection over there isn't really that flexible or designed for any kind of direct feedback, and, second; The Red Hen collection has now gone under it's blanket moratorium until Halloween. I’ve given it my best shot, and my guesses and theories are either right, or partially right, or I have been taking another scenic cruise down the Martian canals. If that is the case, you are all welcome to point and laugh.
And by this weekend you may have the opportunity to point and laugh at this post as well. Because I am going out on a limb here, and we may all soon find out if the fat lady bounces. But I want to get this out in public before the weekend in the event that I am right.
I say the leaked “spoiler novel” is a hoax.
My conclusion is not exactly a shot in the dark, nor is it a simple side trip down that river in Egypt (bookings to Mars being rather hard to come by this season). There appears to be a whole Playfair-compliant trail of evidence leading up to it.
If I am correct, JK Rowling, in company with Arthur Levine of Scholastic have led the fans a merry dance, with a big reveal of the joke scheduled for either the weekend of the 7th book’s release, or very soon afterwards. I do not know how many other people are in on the game, but I would hazard a guess that there are several. Quite possibly including Melissa Aneli and Emerson Spartz of the Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet, respectively, who have been instrumental in dispensing the clues to the fandom, although their participation may have been unwitting.
I admit that my inner conspiracy theorist often needs a firm reigning in, and this does appear to be turning into one of the occasions that might call for that. But IF this was an inside job, that would explain how they got all the details right.
Because the details all seem absolutely, and unmistakably, right. I have not seen the pirated book in toto, but I have seen some of the shots, specifically the opening page, the Table of Contents, and the purported Epilogue.
If this is a hoax from anyone other than Scholastic themselves, there is no guarantee that the real book will have the same physical features. The real book may not have red end papers, a golden yellow spine binding, and sort of a greenish-grey binding cloth (that color may be a distortion from the light source in the photographs, the actual color seems neutral enough for it to be possible that there is some degree of color shift). If it is an in-house hoax from Scholastic, it almost certainly will.
What clinches it for me as being from Scholastic is the artwork. I have only seen four of the “pirate” copy’s chapter head illos. The one at the opening of chapter 1, and the one at the opening of the epilogue, plus two others that were posted separately, the one for chapter 7, and the one for chapter 23. If those illos are not Mary GrandPre’s own art I will eat my Hat (those of you who attended Lumos will no doubt remember that Hat). And I very much doubt that the rest of the chapter head illos in the photographed book are suddenly in some other artist's style.
Now, who is most likely to have 37 fresh, new, highly recognizable pieces of Mary GrandPre’s chapter head art just lying around unused?
So, if all the details are right, why do I question the authenticity of the pirate copy?
Because, as usual with anything associated with Rowling, the numbers don’t add up.
They quite literally do not add up.
Months ago Scholastic announced to the whole world that the U.S. edition of JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ was going to weigh in at 784 pages. In the Scholastic editions that is 784 pages of story, not 784 pages of book. The Scholastic editions have always begun the numbered pages of the story at the opening of the first chapter with “page 1” and go straight through to the end. I do not expect them to suddenly change that pattern now. No one paid a lot of attention to the page count of the first three books, but Goblet of FIre was 734 numbered pages of story. Order of the Phoenix is 870, Half-Blood Prince is 652.
Over on Mugglenet, even as I type, there is a link to an interview with Jim Dale which reiterates that the ink-and-paper edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ weighs in at 784 pages.
Does the pirate copy weigh in at 784 pages? It does not. It tops out at 759 pages. 759 pages is not 784 pages. Not even if you are JK Rowling.
I also would briefly like to ask; why photograph the book rather than scan it? Wouldn't it have been easier to read if you slapped it on a flatbed and scanned the pages? But I suppose at the size of the standard Scholastic hardcover edition you would have had to scan each page individually, rather that shoot the whole spread, which may well have been a consideration. But I really do suspect that photographing the book was done for verisimilitude. We saw the book. We saw the red end papers and the gold spine binding. We saw an actual book.
Now, it has been suggested that Scholastic may have fibbed about the real book’s page count. But lying to the entire public about your product is just not good business. Besides, that argument is putting the cart before the horse. Despite the obvious appearance of the pirate copy’s being a Scholastic product, Scholastic has not acknowledged it, nor have they made any announcement of their book having managed to get away from them a week before its scheduled release. So far as I can ascertain, where Scholastic is concerned, the pirate copy is not their product, it does not exist.
So, why should they have done this?
Well, I think it all comes down to “for fun and profit”. Amazon may not be making any money off of this book but Scholastic is. I think they could afford it. Print a limited edition with everyone in on the joke to get a copy, and probably a box of them to Rowling. And if you ever get a chance at one ouy might want to consider it. Highly collectable, after all.
But the emphasis is probably on the “fun” end of the scale. And that’s where Rowling comes in. It all may just be my inner conspiracy theorist gettng out of control, but I think that a decoy story turned loose by a publishing house which stands to make a bomb, and a very wealthy and famous author with a demonstrated apreciation for the idea of practical jokes is easier to believe than that the publishing house should lie about their book. By the time they made their page count announcement they knew how long the 7th volume was going to be.
I do think they might, between them, have decided to underwrite a limited edition of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Ballyhoo’ as a publicity stunt. It is, after all, the last hurrah for the series, as a series. Why not wind it all up with a bang?
And they certainly didn’t do it on the spur of the moment. I'm looking back over a phantom trail that stretches for nearly a year.
So, about that trail of evidence:
They do seem to have played fair with us. All of the clues were out there in public, all easily accessible. And Rowling, or somebody, seems to have made sure that the links to them would all reach her fans. Either from her own official website or from the big news sites to whom she has given Fan Site awards on the official site.
I am inclined to think the inception for the stunt took place around the time of Rowling’s appearance with Stephen King and John Grisholm in the ‘Harry, Carrie and Garp’ presentation at the beginning of August, 2006. And I think it started with Rowling.
That particular trip was the first time the author had been on this side of the pond in a number of years. It would hardly have been astonishing for her to have looked in on her American publishers or discussed a project with them. But the thing that snags in my recollection was the beginning of that slow tease that Rowling launched regarding the forthcoming title. She claims that she had an idea for a new title while in the shower. For some months afterward there was a whole little fan-dance about the two titles. Then, suddenly she had a third title. one that was about “two vowels and a consonant” different from one of the first two. This kept everyone speculating until the final release, at winter solstice, of the official title; ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
Fairly recently on the official website she has reopened the issue of what those alternate titles were, and, somewhat curiously, she refused to answer the question. I find it difficult to think of any alternate title that is two vowels and a consonant off from “Deathly Hallows” that might actually give anything significant away, so what would be the harm in satisfying the request? “Maybe after the book is out.” Rowling tells us. Yes, I rather suspect so. In fact, I take leave to wonder whether it was only a new title that occured to Rowling in that shower.
My next scrap of maybe-evidence is far enough off-canon that I am not at all sure of the time frame, but I am pretty sure the link originally showed up on one of the major fandom news sites. To be honest, my recollection is vague enough that it may be completely out to lunch, or conflated from multiple sources, but I am not making it up. This one was an article regarding fanfic, and fanfic writers, in which, iirc, there was a brief reference to a youngster (not one whose name was familiar to me) who had actually been commissioned to write a fanfic story. I think that it was a Harry Potter fanfic story. There may well have been a mention of Deathly Hallows in the article, which would put it around January at the earliest, but I will not swear to that. There was no mention of Rowling’s involvement, and she was not quoted in the article, so I doubt that it is to be found upon any of the Rowling interview sites.
If this is the case, and that unassuming little blurb was a shout-out that one lucky fan was commissioned to write a Harry Potter story, the pirate copy may well be that story. If so, the fan was probably paid on a work-for-hire basis, and Scholastic owns the copyright. The kid will get her day in the sun in the big reveal this weekend.
Which brings us to Mary GrandPre. Like I say, that artwork looks absolutely genuine. We’ve had a number of interviews posted with the artist since the book went into production. Most recently we got one in which Ms GrandPre turned loose some rather interesting information.
Typically, she tells us, the illustrator of a book owns their own work. It’s copyright, and the artist holds the copyright. With Scholastic, and Harry Potter, it’s different. Scholastic wanted more control. They bought and own the copyright. The artist gets name recognition and her fee.
Which means that Scholastic can do anything they want with that artwork. Use it for publicity materials, put it on their stationary, use it to illustrate work by other authors, pretty much anything.
And then we start getting the build-up to turning the whole thing loose. Here, over the last month before the official release, all of a sudden the key players involved in the stunt are all pointed out in the public eye. We get the fairly predictable flurry of interviews and appearances by Rowling. But Levine is also abruptly in the news with a fairly lengthy interview, and GrandPre is interviewed on several different occasions.
And now the hook is gradually readied to reel us all in.
This stage of the proceedings was launched some months ago when Rowling posted her request to please not spoil the fun for others on her website. That was fair enough, even though she couldn’t have held much hope of the request actually being granted.
The owners of Leaky and Mugglenet quickly chimed in and issued statements that they would NOT be posting spoilers on their sites if they could possibly help it. All of which served to put spoilage very much on everyone’s mind.
Then Rowling appeared on a certain Mr Ross’s talk show, which almost immediately hit the web as a YouTube file in which the issue of “spoilers” was deliberately raised and in which Ms Rowling pointed out that ALL of the novels so far had been “spoiled” before their official release (i.e., a strong suggestion that this one probably will be, too).
And then, right about the same time, a number of links went up referencing a projected documentary on Rowling and her work which is scheduled for later this year.
And Mugglenet (possibly Leaky as well) posted one, which - despite the announcement that Mugglenet would not be posting spoilers, included a “possible spoiler” warning - to an article from the Guardian alluding to to video clips from the project - in which Rowling had unquestionably taken part.
Now, I did not see these clips, but news gets around. I was told, and have heard it from too many sources to particularly doubt it, that in the course of this teaser for the documentary there was a brief shot of the opening paragraph and the first exchange of dialogue from the first chapter of the book.
Well, okay. That is the kind of thing that might very well be released with the author and publishers’ sanction as an official teaser for the book. You aren’t going to get a lot of spoilage from the opening paragraph of a book which goes on for another 783 pages.
Only... it is exactly the same opening paragraph and dialogue exchange as in the pirate copy.
Bingo.
That was the hook.
Now we sit back and wait for the big reveal of the Sting.
I cannot answer for the authenticity of the next paragraph of the pirate copy. And for that matter, I am not going to speculate farther on just how much of the pirate copy might actually be legitimate.
Those could be the real chapter titles, with the fanfic's text massaged to comply with them while the real volume 7 was undergoing the editorial process.
Those could be the legitimate chapter head illos. Or they could be a whole second set commissioned from the artist especially for the decoy. If so, it could have been set up months ago.
But I will have to say:
We have known for months that the Scholastic edition of HP & the Deathly Hallows is 784 pages.
If this book is not 784 pages, then;
it is almost guaranteed NOT to be JK Rowling's ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
Even though it may be Scholastic’s.
ETA (July 18): Oh the verse just gets worse. A second purported book has now surfaced with the same level of professionalism in appearance, the same GrandPre artwork, the same opening page of chapter 1 (And chapter title)
- and just about a completely different Table of contents. We don't get to see all of it, since we only get the last 3 pages of ToC, page 2 of which (our first page) starts at chapter 10.
HOWEVER, the page numbers in the ToC are identical to the ones in the first leaked copy. Including the Epilogue (which also has the same title as in the first copy) starting on page 753.
There is a side by side comparison of the two here:
http://community.livejournal.com/its_a_fake/7852.html?style=mine
So far as I know the whole text of this book has not been uploaded anywhere. Just the sample pages in the comparison.
Most (not all) of the chapter titles actually look a bit more plausible than in the first version. And it has a MUCH more typical title page. However, the one page of the opening to the epilogue strikes me as far less plausable, given that it directly contradicts statements actually made by Rowling. Admittedly it was in a session back during the 3-year summer and she may have changed her mind, but still. Nor does the two page opening of the purported chapter 3 strike me as a particularly likely direction for Rowling to be taking the story. Unforgivable curses used for mere convenience? I don't think so.
There is no indication of how long this version of the book or of the epilogue supposedly are, either, it would take something in the neighborhood of 30 pages of epilogue to bring it up to the 784 total, but that seems a bit in excess of the requirements.
I am frankly unconvinced that there really is a 2nd version of the complete book. I think we've got a 2-stage scam here. The page numbers for the chapters of the 2nd version are exactly the same as those of the first. If someone was producing a competing hoax copy of the book, the chapter lengths would not all fall out as the same length as those of a separate, independently produced hoax. And this would have been an easy enough thing to tweak for verisimilitude.
This version is piggy-backing on the first one, and it was designed to piggy-back on that first one. And to be seen to be piggy-backing on the first one. There is no evidence that any more of this version exists than the ToC and the sample pages shown in the side-by-side comparison.
Ergo: It is all a part of the same hoax.
Now, I agree that while there is no question that these are hoaxes, I may be barking at the moon that Scholastic is involved with it. I may end up asking Swythyv to show me how to fold newspaper hats.
But, still, the art had to have been lifted from Scholastic, and whoever lifted it seems to have lifted all of it (unless the real book has more than 37 chapters - which you have to admit is possible) and who else has this kind of resources?
ETA (July 19): Now, presumably the NY Times has weighed in with a review.
Frankly, I am bemused that the New York bloody Times would do something so “unprofessional” as to publically post a review of a forthcoming book, particularly one with such notoriously exaggerated security measures surrounding it, several days before the official release, merely on the strength of ONE distributor having broken the terms of their agreement with the publishers and shipped the book early (that much has been confirmed, evidently). Doesn’t future good will with the publishers count for anything? The review claims that the reviewer had purchased the book from an unnamed source.
Now: I found the link to this review on Mugglenet. It is no longer there. Instead there is a press release with Rowling quoted as being staggered that a newspaper would publish spoilers in the form of reviews. Frankly I am a bit staggered myself, and the swift removal of the link is no more than I would expect.
But it does make me wonder why it was there in the first place. Mugglenet and Leaky have both stated that they will not post spoilers if they can help it, and they could certainly have helped that. In fact Mugglenet helped it to the point of issuing a warning that there were spoilers in the review and had added a link to its own extracts from the review that did not contain the spoilers.
Coming on the heels of the Mugglenet link to the Guardian article and video clips with the brief teaser shot of the opening paragraph (which has now dissapeared), the whole issue of dissapearing evidence is keeping my inner conspiracy theorist awake.
All the more so in that the review lists the book as having, not the 784 pages of the retail version announced by Scholastic, but the same 759 of the “carpet book”. (The review is also dated, not July 18, the day I followed the link and read it, but today, July 19. This may not be relevant.)
The review has not yet disapeared, however. The link is:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/books/19potter.html
All I can say is that if this is legitimate, then the final volume of the series has one hell of a gaping logic hole in it.
And the review claims that the page count is 759. Excuse me? The NY Times deliberately went looking for a copy of the reinforced library edition? Did they buy it from someone in a trench coat on the street? Right up to the Jim Dale blurb posted yesterday the page count of the book that any of the public will be actually purchasing is still supposedly 784.
One of the posters over on one of my discussion boards wondered whether the reviewer had read the carpet book, believed it, and upon learing that the book really had escaped early, nipped in with a review in order to scoop everyone.
ETA (July 20): The N.Y. Times is swearing up and down that their book is “genuine”.
Well, it is genuinely a book. I’ll willingly grant them that. I genuinely doubt that Rowling wrote it.
They also still claim that it has 759 pages.
A missing piece of the puzzle clicked into place on one of my discussion boards this morning. Someone on the board took the time to get out to her local public library yesterday and take a look at their copies of the books.
Every. Single. One.
...was the same length as the general release editions of those books. Same page count, same everything but the binding. There were about 4 of the 6 sitting on the shelves. Color me not surprised.
So. From the looks of things, Scholastic has never before reformatted their books for a seperate library edition. I am now inclined to doubt that they have done so this time, either. Ergo: I am now seriously doubting the existance of any 759-page “library” edition of JK Rowling’s ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’.
So, why should Scholastic lead us to believe that there is one?
Well, if, as I have been contending, this was an in-house hoax, they would have announced that there was one because they knew the bogus copy (copies?) was that length. The cover story is that the leaked pirate copy was allegedly stolen from a library.
And perhaps the medicine will go down smoother if we all start calling it a “prank” rather than a “hoax”.
After all, I really doubt that a lot of libraries are going to complain if their (legitimate) copies turn out to have 784 pages.
And, for the record; everything that I hear about what is in the book(s) sounds remarkably like a compendium of some of the most widely-spread fan theories - exaggerated for effect. I know that the opening page of the epilogue of the “2nd version” in the side-by-side comparison read to me like a shout-out salute to Knight2King. Next I will be expecting to be told that the Sorting Hat is a Horcrux, after all.
That this 759-page version of the book actually exists does appear to be fairly conclusive. I just do not believe that it was written by JK Rowling.
And I will continue to disbelieve it until my copy gets delivered tomorrow, and it turns out to have 759 pages.