The chamber of secrecy surrounding the contents of the seventh and final novel in the Harry Potter series appears to have been broken via the magic of the Internet.
Photographs of what seem to be all 784 pages of the U.S. edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling began to circulate on numerous file-sharing websites Tuesday. The photographs appear to be of two-page spreads of the novel's entire text, including epilogue, shot by a 35 mm camera of a book laid out on a rug.
If genuine, the leak is a severe blow to the marketing plans of its English-language publishers, including Canada's Raincoast Books, which have created a formidable, multi-million-dollar security regime in advance of the novel's official hardcover publication at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
An estimated 1.3-million copies have been printed for the Canadian market (the Canadian edition, with a $45 suggested list price, will run to 608 pages, thanks to smaller type and leading and reduced gutters and margins relative to the U.S. version) while its U.S. publisher, Scholastic Inc., has reportedly printed at least 12-million copies, with a suggested list price of $34.99. More than 325-million Potter books have been sold worldwide since the series made its debut in England in 1997 with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
