All 300 Mac's Convenience Stores in the three prairie provinces and British Columbia have been denied permission to sell the newest, and last, instalment of the popular Harry Potter series when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale July 21.
"We're obviously disappointed," said Mac's Calgary-based category manager Dave Clark late last week. Mac's western-Canadian stores had sold the last three titles in the Potter series and hoped to do so with the latest. But they've been shut out by Raincoast Books, the Vancouver-based publisher and distributor of the Harry Potter series in Canada. "It was purely their decision," said Clark.
Raincoast would not confirm last week that Mac's western-Canadian stores won't be taking delivery of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Mac's eastern stores have never carried Potter titles.) But Jamie Broadhurst, vice-president of marketing, acknowledged that some retail outlets that were previously allowed to sell earlier Potter titles, won't be doing so this time. Names of the companies were not revealed.
"We have reviewed the security procedures with all our customers, big and small," said Broadhurst, "and if we have concerns that the security of the novel can't be guaranteed, then we've made the tough decision not to ship for the on-sale date. ... Security is our absolute, paramount concern."
Sasha Tate-Howarth, 15, right, with her friends Robin Blue 12, left and Shifra Cooper 16, centre, are shown reading letters they and others have written as part of The Phoenix Quill project, a Harry Potter prequel of their own invention. (Wayne Hiebert /The Globe and Mail)
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Sales, too, are paramount. Raincoast has, by some estimates, printed as many as 1.3-million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the English-language market, the vast majority of which will start to be sold at 12:01 a.m. on July 21 in each of Canada's six time zones. (Non-English versions have traditionally been published five to 12 months after English publication.) If previous experience holds, more than 50 per cent of these copies will be sold by the morning of July 22.
Raincoast has announced a suggested list price of $45 for the 607-page title, but virtually every Canadian retailer will be selling it for less -- some, in fact, at a discount of 50 per cent.
With so much at stake, Raincoast, along with all the other English-language Potter publishers in the world, has adopted a strict policy of secrecy in recent years prior to the publication of each novel in the series, started by British author J. K. Rowling in 1997. It's long argued that "irreparable harm" will result should a particular novel's plot twists or climactic scenes be known in advance.
In 2005, just before the July 16 publication of the sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Raincoast got a restraining order from B.C.'s Supreme Court prohibiting "anyone who [had] directly or indirectly received [an advance] copy" of that novel from "copying or disclosing," selling or "exhibiting in public" virtually any of its contents before its on-sale date.
Raincoast claimed it was forced to get the order after at least three grocery stores, including a Mac's in Calgary, inadvertently offered the novel for sale before July 16. As a result, Raincoast yanked whatever copies were still in these stores and only resumed shipments to them after official publication.
Raincoast's Broadhurst said security this time "is even tighter than before." Previously, some stores would receive their Potter orders nine or 10 days in advance of publication. For Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, however, "we're working on a 'just-in-time' delivery system," he said. This means most outlets won't be getting their books until eight or 12 hours before they're permitted to be sold. It is, Broadhurst acknowledged, "a huge logistical difficulty."
Mac's Clark said he understood Raincoast's reluctance to service the convenience stores. Previously, "getting us books four or five days before, that was asking for trouble. Someone's not going to get the message or make a mistake," as indeed happened in 2005. This time, however, Raincoast is, to his mind, working on too tight a leash, even if it means "the less number of points of distribution that they send it to, the better control they have over it."
Repeated calls last week to officials at grocery giant Loblaw Cos. Ltd. in Toronto were not returned. In 2005 two Loblaw-affiliated outlets - a Real Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam, B.C., and an Extra Foods store in Abbotsford, B.C. - accidentally sold a total of about 20 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and were temporarily denied copies as a result. A representative with Loblaw's public-affairs department said last week that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows would be carried in the company's Real Canadian Superstores, which number more than 100, but couldn't say if copies would be for sale in other stores under the Loblaw banner such as Extra Foods, Zehrs, Fortinos and Provigo.
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