*raise my hands*

 

The best ending for the story is if Harry died in a battle against Voldie.

Well... both of them died.

Of course he will die, it will stop unofficial sequels being made

booo I'll have to wait like 6 months to the spanish version..

 

the english version is expensive here =(

^ Same here! The indonesian version will probably come out in 2008.

 

Of course he will die, it will stop unofficial sequels being made

That's true.

 

And who knows how long we will have to wait for the next phenomenal books like this again? :(

I hope Harry doesn't die. I'm not a Harry fan really, I don't mind if he dies, but it's either Harry or Voldemort, it can't be both. I want the good side to win, not the evil side. That's why I hope Harry lives.

If Harry dies that doesn't mean the evil side wins. Sometimes the good side have to sacrifice their savior/hero to win against the evil side. And I think that's what will happen in the end.

 

Remember what the prophecy said? That one of them won't live if the other dies. I guess that means they have to live together or die together. :thinking:

The prophecy said that neither can live while the other survives - one dies and one lives.

 

EDIT: But yeah, it is true that the hero sometimes has to be sacrificed for the good side to win.

I'd say he lives coz JK Rowling hasn't ruled out writing another book in the future about when he's older....

^ Same here! The indonesian version will probably come out in 2008.

 

 

That's true.

 

And who knows how long we will have to wait for the next phenomenal books like this again? :(

 

That is what some people are saying, which book series will be the next Harry Potter.

 

Bloomsbury's profits dropped by 74% last year because of no Harry Potter.

Harry Potter firm in box-set plan

Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury has unveiled plans to gain extra revenue from the JK Rowling phenomenon.

 

The seventh and final novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, will be published on 21 July.

 

And the firm has now said that it will launch a box-set of all seven books about the teenage wizard on 1 October.

 

Bloomsbury, which saw annual profits drop 74% in 2006 - a Potter-free year - said that export orders for the final book were up 17% on book number six.

 

Euphoria faded

 

The global success of the Harry Potter books has generated bumper profits for Bloomsbury, but the company is now under pressure to find new hit publications as the Potter series draws to a close.

 

In a statement ahead of its annual general meeting (AGM), Bloomsbury said it would not be giving any guidance on its 2007 profit because of the "unpredictable market".

 

However it said that it was confident of its strategy for the "medium and long term".

 

Shares in Bloomsbury are now below 200 pence, having nearly touched 400 pence two years ago.

 

"Earlier successes now appear a distant memory," said Hargreaves Lansdown equity analyst Keith Bowman.

 

"Whilst Harry Potter remains a key ingredient in the group's future success, management are now having to look beyond the initial euphoria created, with new authors and acquisitions being sought."

 

He added: "On balance, the jury is still out as to whether management can inject the necessary levels of diversification needed in the highly competitive publishing world."

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/6248342.stm

 

 

JULY 2, 2007

 

NEWS & INSIGHTS

 

The Twisted Economics Of Harry Potter The wizard brings both profit and pain to his business partners

 

 

Call it the curse of Hogwarts. It turns out that--at least for some in the wizarding world--it's tough to make money out of magic. Harry Potter has fans clamoring in excitement as the seventh and last book in J.K. Rowling's hit series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, lands worldwide on July 21. With the fifth movie due out in weeks and the recent announcement of an Orlando theme-park attraction that could cost half a billion dollars, Pottermania is at an all-time high.

 

But what should be a pot of gold for Harry's business partners is turning into an empty cauldron for many of them. The most successful literary brand in recent history has made its author a billionaire, but others have not fared so well. Retailers, spellbound by the chance to reach millions of Potter-obsessed customers, are cost-cutting for market share to the point where many stand to lose money. For book publishers, the tsunami distorts results in Potter release years, creating wild share-price swings and a distraction from other parts of the business. Even Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (TWX ), which has made billions off the Harry Potter movies, saw sales and profits drop last year and in the first quarter without a fresh Potter offering in the mix.

 

For booksellers, the source of the pain is mammoth retailers like Amazon.com (AMZN ), Wal-Mart (WMT ), and Britain's ASDA chain, which have slashed prices by 50% to woo fans. "It's like being in the trenches with the bullets flying over you," says Sonia Benster, owner of The Children's Bookshop in Huddersfield, England. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos concedes that the company won't make a profit from the new Potter book. But he told shareholders that it has racked up more than 1 million pre-orders so far--and, Amazon hopes, plenty of new customers who will buy other books. Because of such struggles for a piece of the Potter pie, notes Simon Fox of Britain's HMV Group PLC, owner of the Waterstone's book chain, it's "hard to make money."

 

Independent booksellers can't even begin to compete on that scale. While many plan to fight back with special midnight parties--in the belief that it's no fun to wear a wizard hat in Wal-Mart--others are just opting out of the frenzy. "I won't be open at midnight," says Bonnie Stuppin of San Francisco's Alexander Book Co. Instead, she'll personally drop off copies to a few customers at no extra cost between midnight and 6 a.m. "It's sad that what little profit the industry can make off Harry Potter is being stripped away," says Stuppin. "If I ran my business that way, I wouldn't be here." Some booksellers who helped launch Potter in America, hosting signings with Rowling when she was starting out, are disillusioned. "In the beginning it was great for us, but the discount has become more important," says Valerie Lewis of Hicklebee's in San Jose, Calif. To Peter Glassman, owner of Manhattan's Books of Wonder, selling Potter below cost is "analogous to downloading music and the impact that has on music stores."

 

Potter's two publishers, which have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide, face a different set of perils. Scholastic Corp. (SCHL ), which has U.S. rights, will never speak ill of the boy wizard whose last book accounted for 8% of revenues and an estimated one-third of profits in the fiscal year that ended in May, 2006. It's planning a record 12 million print run this time. But analyst Drew Crum of Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. (SF ) says the children's book division often does better in off-Potter periods. "The company tends to lose focus in a Harry Potter release year," says Crum. "They extend so much energy on one title," he adds, and not enough on fixing things like the company's flailing direct-to-home book business. Although there has been the usual pre-Potter run-up in the stock, Scholastic's share price is below where it was five years ago. With the Harry franchise about to end, Scholastic is focusing on share buybacks, international expansion, and repairing weaker parts of the business. And the company says backlist editions of Potter could generate tens of millions in sales each year.

 

Few face as gaping a hole with Harry's exit as its original publisher, Bloomsbury, which holds all rights to the titles outside the U.S. Last year, while the world waited as Rowling said she was working away on Book 7 in Scottish cafés instead of her multiple homes, the publisher's profits collapsed by three-quarters, to $10.3 million, as revenues fell almost a third, to $148.6 million. Spooked at the prospect of a one-trick pony, investors have sent Bloomsbury's share price down about 40% in the last year--even as a guaranteed hit is about to reach store shelves.

 

Now with Britain's biggest bookmaker taking bets that Harry will get killed off in the last installment, the possibility looms that the figurehead of this brand won't even be "alive" soon. That could be a real drag for General Electric Co.'s (GE ) Universal Parks & Resorts, which beat out rival Walt Disney Co. (DIS ) to build "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter" with Warner Bros. in its Orlando Park by late 2009. While it won't disclose the size of the investment, International Theme Park Services consultant Dennis Speigel predicts they could easily spend $500 million to get it right. The specter of a dead Harry could dampen some of the fun. But Universal Parks Chairman and CEO Tom William says the 20-acre attraction is "going to be a game-changer" and pledges to do "the biggest and best job on this as on any job we've ever taken."

 

In any case, it's easy to understand why the Potter brand is so seductive. Warner Bros. (TWX ) pumped out some disappointments last year, such as the thriller Lady in the Water, helping push movie revenues down by 17%. But Potter brings the magic all back. The company has made billions off the franchise and stands to make billions more as it rolls out movies and DVDs in the coming years. Unlike bookstores, movie theaters don't slash admission prices when a new Potter film comes out. That said, the $974 million worldwide box office gross for the first Harry Potter movie (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) stands at 9% more than the $895 million gross for the most recent film in 2005, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And that's amid rising ticket prices.

 

Even if Harry Potter leaves a trail of profit-starved vendors and Potter-addicted producers in its wake as the series wraps up next month, the infatuation is unlikely to die. That's what Emerson Spartz, founder of the popular fan site MuggleNet.com, is betting on. Spartz, a University of Notre Dame sophomore who launched the site in 1999 at the age of 12, gets more than 1 million hits a day. He's now pulling in "a six-figure income" from ads and his best-seller, MuggleNet.com's What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7. He hopes to mimic the fan base that's grown around The Lord of the Rings and has no plans to close down the site. "There will always be people who get into Harry Potter fresh and want to meet other new Harry Potter fans," says Spartz.

 

 

 

By Diane Brady, with Kerry Capell in London and Joshua Vittor in New York

 

 

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_27/b4041045.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily

Amazon won't make a lot of money on the books themselves, but if you only get the book you will pay for postage.

 

I paid £7.99 for my copy a couple months ago, and so far it looks a good deal :)

 

Less than 10 days 'til H-Day

Of course he will die, it will stop unofficial sequels being made

 

Pfff... Harry Potter's bastard son?

Harry Potter's secret kid brother?

Harry Potter's ghost?

 

There are endless possibilities.

Isn't there some sort of copyright to stop unnofficial sequels being made?.

Potter embargo 'could be broken'

 

The final Harry Potter novel could hit shelves before its official release next week.

 

Some shops are not expected to keep a written agreement which prevents them selling the book before 21 July.

 

"It's quite possible one will break the embargo," says Katherine Rushton from The Bookseller magazine. "They'd do it to be first, and for all the PR."

 

The book's publishers, Bloomsbury, said it had "no reason to believe anyone would want to ruin the excitement".

 

"If such a thing were to happen, we believe that the public would make their feelings known by not buying it from such a spoilsport retailer."

 

However, it added, "it is our intention to vigorously enforce the embargo if required".

 

Author JK Rowling has also stressed the importance of keeping to the official publication date on her website.

 

"I want the readers who have, in many instances, grown up with Harry, to embark on the last adventure they will share with him without knowing where they are they going," she wrote.

 

Embargos on previous instalments of the series have generally been observed because Bloomsbury threatened to withhold future Harry Potter books from stores who flouted the rules.

 

This time there is no such incentive.

 

"Because it's the final Harry Potter, Bloomsbury doesn't have that same power," says Rushton. "It has played its last ace card."

 

Midnight openings

 

Bookshops around the UK, many of which are opening at midnight to sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, have mixed opinions on whether the embargo will hold.

 

"I'd be very surprised if anyone sold it early," said Tim Curtis of The Little Apple Bookshop in York. "I'm not sure consumers would want it."

 

"People like to be part of the midnight thing," agrees Suzanne Jones of Heffers in Cambridge.

 

"I've got an 11-year-old who has got it in her diary and she wants to go out and be part of it."

 

"To buy it in the cold light of day on a Friday is just not the same."

 

But Robert Webb, who has run Kingsthorpe Book Shop in Northampton for the last 34 years, says it is "a miracle" the embargo has held in the past.

 

"It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it did get broken this time.

 

"But I think the secret police are out there ready to jump on anyone who breaks the embargo with a terrific sledgehammer."

 

'Spoilsports'

 

Harry Potter mania has led to the book becoming available in locations where you would never expect to find works of literature - such as garages and hardware stores.

 

It is thought that these shops - which have less to lose by souring relations with Bloomsbury - are the most likely to reveal the boy wizard's fate ahead of time.

 

"I don't think you'll get traditional bookshops doing that," says Rushton. "Inside the industry and outside the industry they'd be seen as spoilsports."

 

But the security operation surrounding the publication of the novel is so tight that anyone who does break the embargo is only likely to get a few hours head-start on their competitors.

 

They may also find themselves at the centre of legal action.

 

Everyone who stocks the book has had to sign an indemnity form, which makes them liable for damages and "other equitable relief" if they do not keep their side of the bargain.

 

No photos

 

As well as setting the embargo, the document imposes stringent conditions on retailers to ensure the plot of the book is not leaked.

 

Retailers have to keep boxes containing the novel "in a secure area under lock and key", and they definitely must not be "visible to the public for any reason".

 

It is not even permitted to take a photograph of the books being delivered.

 

One shop-owner who will not be complying with the regulations is Mr Webb in Northampton - because he has decided not to order any copies of the last ever Harry Potter.

 

"There's a branch of Asda 100 yards away from our shop," he explains. "We're advising our loyal customers to take advantage of their generosity.

 

"They'll save three quid - which they can come and spend on something else here!"

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/6292128.stm

Pfff... Harry Potter's bastard son?

Harry Potter's secret kid brother?

Harry Potter's ghost?

 

There are endless possibilities.

:laugh3: I've never thought of these.

 

Isn't there some sort of copyright to stop unnofficial sequels being made?.

I guess there is. I don't know.

6 days remaining.

 

And still the big 3 supermarkets are keeping the price they are charging in store a secret. I wouldn't be surprised if in one of the big 3 supermarkets they charge less than £7.00 for it.

think is was kwik save last time who offered it for £6.99 on the first day until they ran out of stock.

 

mine's coming with the postman from amazon, who have promised to price-match up until dispatch.

 

 

completely unrelated, I've added a spoilers warning to the title ready for sat am. but please use the spoilers tags if you do put any in here. i don't want the plot ruining in the course of moderating please :) i've caved in and bought the hb so as not to have it ruined

mine's coming with the postman from amazon

 

O Really?

 

Amazon must be making a mint on postage, either you got to pay up as it's less than £15 or buy more stuff. Whereas I shall be in Andover at midnight Friday to pick up my copy :smug:

Riddle of Harry Topper's suicide

BETS are pouring in on boy wizard Harry Potter killing HIMSELF in the final book of JK Rowling’s series.

 

Bookies William Hill have slashed the price on Harry sacrificing himself from a hefty 33-1 to odds on.

 

They fear fans with inside knowledge of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are plotting a second huge sting.

 

Bookies were cleaned out after the release of The Half-Blood Prince in 2005, when in-the-know punters backed headmaster Dumbledore to die.

 

William Hill spokesman Rupert Adams said last night: “The idea has gained momentum with fans. They expect for good to triumph over evil Harry will have to cause his own death.

 

“There has been so much money put on we fear this is a massive sting by people in the know.”

 

The odds for Harry killing himself are 10-11 on, with arch-enemy Lord Voldemort at 9-4 to slay the Hogwarts hero.

 

But William Hill will refund all the bets if Harry survives.

 

The suicide prediction is the latest conspiracy theory about Harry’s seventh adventure, published on July 21.

 

Chum Hagrid is tipped to die, while fans have backed baddie Peter Pettigrew to SAVE Harry.

 

Publishers Bloomsbury have organised massive security to safeguard the plot.

 

The books will be delivered in crates bound with steel chains and arrive at shops one day before they go on sale.

 

It is expected to sell three million copies in 24 hours.

 

And fans have flocked to see fifth film Order of the Phoenix, released on Thursday.

 

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007320633,00.html

here's too expensive.... it's like mmm £25 .. I think I'll wait the spanish version

O Really?

 

Amazon must be making a mint on postage, either you got to pay up as it's less than £15 or buy more stuff. Whereas I shall be in Andover at midnight Friday to pick up my copy :smug:

 

 

I just ordered my sister's birthday present 5 months early to get the free postage :D

 

Having worked the last 2 midnight releases, I shall quite happily miss this one. Never understood how people got so worked up about it. there were people crying as we were wheeling a pallet full of boxes onto the shopfloor. those two nights will quite easily go down with some of the weirdest of my life

My only worry is getting out of Andover, as the By-Pass will be shut for 48 hours from 10PM Friday to 10PM Sunday for bridge works (I believe they are taking out an old railway bridge to make it wider so a 4th track can be laid in the future), also known as the council has too much money.

 

Other than that, my only other worry is the people who will be dressed up waiting to get a hold of the book.

here's too expensive.... it's like mmm £25 .. I think I'll wait the spanish version

 

Here is very expensive too, but I don't think I can wait 7 months for the spanish version :o

My only worry is getting out of Andover, as the By-Pass will be shut for 48 hours from 10PM Friday to 10PM Sunday for bridge works (I believe they are taking out an old railway bridge to make it wider so a 4th track can be laid in the future), also known as the council has too much money.

 

Other than that, my only other worry is the people who will be dressed up waiting to get a hold of the book.

 

there must be more than one way of out andover :o

 

if the people dressed up is your only worry, you should be fine. its the kids who haven't been to bed and who have been fed pop & sweets all evening that would be worrying me!!!!