Blame Canada!
Apparently the people holding the key to the secrets of the universe--oops, I mean HBP--are a few pre-teens and their parents living someone in Cocquitlam, 30 km east of Vancouver, who bought copies mistakenly distributed in a Great Canadian Superstore. They're being bribed to return their copies with Harry Potter T-shirts and bookplates autographed by JKR herself. Raincoast Books, the Canadian distributor, has built much of its recent publishing strength on the HP phenonenon and now has the clout of the BC Supreme Court behind it to enforce silence on any plot leakages.
I have mixed feelings about this. Raincoast is hardly a "corporate bad guy," having published numerous books on environmental issues, and was the only publisher of OotP of the 55 world-wide who printed that book print on "100-percent post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-friendly paper," according to a thesis for a Masters of Publishing at McGill University.
On the other hand, the HP phenomenon is huger than anything imaginable in the publishing world. Like many such huge phenomena with a life-force of its own, this one threatens to swamp the little people the HP books originally set out to please and entertain. The spectre of Raincoast and all of JKR's considerable legal resources massed, like a congregation of Death Eaters, at the gates of some local Great Canadian Stupidstore, eh? makes me a tad uneasy.
Or am I just being paranoid?
I have mixed feelings about this. Raincoast is hardly a "corporate bad guy," having published numerous books on environmental issues, and was the only publisher of OotP of the 55 world-wide who printed that book print on "100-percent post-consumer recycled, ancient-forest-friendly paper," according to a thesis for a Masters of Publishing at McGill University.
On the other hand, the HP phenomenon is huger than anything imaginable in the publishing world. Like many such huge phenomena with a life-force of its own, this one threatens to swamp the little people the HP books originally set out to please and entertain. The spectre of Raincoast and all of JKR's considerable legal resources massed, like a congregation of Death Eaters, at the gates of some local Great Canadian Stupidstore, eh? makes me a tad uneasy.
Or am I just being paranoid?