NEWS: Teen Wizard, Media Blizzard

CULTURE: Teen Wizard, Media Blizzard

Authors are mostly immune to bootlegs. There’s never been a Napster for books or a YouTube for literature. Books obviously don’t exist in a form that can be easily uploaded onto the web; they’re physical objects existing in physical space. Unless publishers allow them to be e-books or if someone painstakingly re-typed the book.

Spoilers for books are readily available on the internet, but since people don’t give a shit about books in general, it’s not a real problem. But when it's a book people actually give a shit about, things get weird.

Photographs of every page in the new Harry Potter book have
appeared online. The 780-page plus book, the seventh and final entry in the Harry Potter series, won’t be released until 12:01 AM on Saturday. However, tens of thousands of people have already downloaded the book and have read the ending which (Possible spoiler alert!) will almost certainly be a letdown.

The pictures released online show the book in two page spreads, and the content is apparently legit – which means that somewhere, someone took over 350 pictures of a book because people needed to know Harry Potter’s fate a week early.

The leaked pages story appeared against a backdrop of desperate media hype surrounding the book. A couple of weeks ago, Gawker.com posted an obviously fake spoiler (which said that Harry died at the end of the book and was smashed into a million pieces) which today became a feature-length newspaper story story.

The New York Times is so hyped up on writing about the possibility that the book’s secrets might be revealed they ran an interview with the Creepy dude who reads the audio book versions.

Newspaper culture desks are tearing apart every aspect of the upcoming Harry Potter like Day of the Dead zombies attacking a scientist. Almost every daily newspaper in America has an article with the jokey headline template “Harry Potter and the _______ .”

So far, my personal favorite has been the Hartford Courant who reported the New England Center for Headache has diagnosed the character’s headaches. (Possible spoiler alert: it's probably a migraine.)

The Los Angeles Times actually managed to write an a interesting story, despite its “Harry Potter and the Diminishing Returns” headline. Even though the book is the publishing event of the year, big bookstores aren’t going to make a dime from it. The rush for the lowest list price has driven the initial sales price down, and many outlets are reportedly selling it for pennies over the wholesale cost. They could make up the loss by selling other books, but apparently nobody wants to buy any other books.

despite my retirement from the media, i went to nytimes.com this morning, as usual. thankfully as soon as i saw there was a harry potter review i got the hell out of there.

i'm really surprised that huge news outlets like the new york times are somehow oblivious to rabid potter fandom (or just don't care).

i'm trying to be so so careful. i wish i could spend the next day and a half in a cave.

let me just say that i will straight up AK anyone who spills any spoilers to me, and don't think i won't crucio for a few hours first.

i do not understand the sadistic urge to ruin something for someone else. it's just plain mean.

i know how my favorite books end and i enjoy them more with every read. besides, i thought harry potter books were for children.

i didn't know they were that good. maybe ill read one sometime.

You really don't mind reading a book on a computer screen? Ugh.

And this isn't about some romantic concept of being the first to crack the binding, the smell of the pages, all that bullshit.

This is about eye strain and convenience.

There's a difference between "good" and "enjoyable".

i despise the hobbit and watership down, but lewis carroll i can get behind, and no, hp is not that good. but it's very good for modern stuff and if you haven't noticed by now that tons of teenagers and adutls are way into this shit by now, you're living under a rock.

there were hardly any children when i saw the movie last week.

I couldn't handle that. I'd lose the thing. It's hard enough keeping track of a cell phone. If I lose a book, that's only ten or twenty books I'm out.

no matter how many times i see or hear 'hermione', i cant get used to it. what the hell kind of name is that? what is this, dostoyevsky? do you think they others names were a compromise? ok, ill call that one harry and that one ron, but im putting my foot down at hermione.

The name of a character from Greek mythology. Just like yrs.

go read Conrads War... now that's a good kids book

srsly.

it's a really pretty name, but i could never use it for any kids (or cats, more likely) because everyone would think of only harry potter and not shakespeare, which would be my point of reference, having read the winter's tale ages before harry potter.

oh snap!

hermionivina grangerovich?

Or has Grawp would say, "Hermi!"

lol I'm such a dork.

all i can recall is that harry potter let his bollocks out on stage. any reviews on his stuff?

ha ha, i said "harry"!