Harry Potter Books Mailed Out Early, Scholastic Ready to Sue

Posted on July 18, 2007

A large batch of the latest Harry Potter novels somehow reached consumers before they were supposed to. Publisher's Lunch reports that 1,200 hundred copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows were mailed early to readers, which explains how scans of the book landed on the Internet.

Scholastic reports that they "recently learned that some individuals have received copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows through the mail, beginning on Tuesday, July 17th, as a result of a breach of the on-sale agreement by the distributor, Levy Home Entertainment, and shipments made by DeepDiscount.com, a customer of that distributor. We are taking immediate legal action against DeepDiscount.com and Levy Home Entertainment. The number of copies shipped is around one one-hundredth of one percent of the total U.S. copies." (That's 1,200 copies if you do the math.)
They add, in vain, this extraordinary (and silly) request: "We are also making a direct appeal to the Harry Potter fans who bought their books from DeepDiscount.com and may receive copies early requesting that they keep the packages hidden until midnight on July 21st.
That shipping error may explain how, following our reports from earlier the week, one bittorrent site has photographs of the entire Harry Potter manuscript posted. TorrentFreak describes the posting, and offers spoilers on a separate page for those who want them.

DeepDiscount.com and Levy Home Entertainment are in big, big trouble, if you ask us. Sue the daylights out of them, Scholastic. Why should anyone get to read the book before we do? Because, to paraphrase Victoria Beckham: It's all about us.