Sotheby’s has announced intentions to auction more first-edition Potters. The details as they provide them are: 455 Rowling, J.K. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Bloomsbury, 1997 8vo, FIRST EDITION, original pictorial boards, erased ownership marks on front paste-down, head and foot of spine bumped, corners slightly chipped, publisher’s binding faults There are two raised …read more!

Yahoo France reports that the French translation of book five will be available on December 3, 2003. The translation will be done by Jean-François Ménard, who translated the first four books.

CBS news reports that “author J.K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter books are some of the most frequently pirated in the world.” The article briefly discusses the impact of book piracy on the publishing industry and the world.

Happy 40th birthday to Jason Isaacs! Perhaps we shouldn’t look forward to more Lucius Malfoy – but bring back the cane and bow! For those who are interested, gloomygus.org is celebrating with a charity drive for the Make a Wish Foundation.

“Billboards. Baseball parks. A countdown in Times Square. Scholastic, Inc., the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling’s mega-selling children’s series, has planned a $3 million-$4 million marketing campaign, more than doubling its budget for the release of the last Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” in 2000,” reports CNN.com. One might ask why …read more!

Hey all – as you might have noticed, we’ve undergone a bit of a redesign. You’ll see above that we are now part of The Floo Network, the most exciting thing to ever happen to this site. The Floo Network is composed of four sites: The Harry Potter Lexicon, run by the incomparable Steve van …read more!

The Canadian run of HP5 is complete.

New York Senator and former Hillary Rodham Clinton’s highly anticipated new book, Living History is still second to Phoenix in Amazon.com orders, according to a report in the New York Daily News. Also, the Shreveport Times notes that “while local booksellers report getting no requests or a few per day for Hillary Clinton’s new book …read more!

Thanks Christopher, for pointing us to this USA Today article, which discusses the Potter audience as it ages, and expectations for Phoenix among that population. Quotage: Erin Meyers, 18, of Tyler, Texas, is excited, but she won’t be wielding a wand on June 21. Having begun the series at 15, the incoming Emory University freshman …read more!

Thanks to the reader who sent this; from the June 6 issue of Entertainment Weekly is this funny, tongue-permanently-stuck-in-cheek, piece: DEAR MS. ROWLING: It has come to our attention that your children’s novel Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is scheduled to be released on June 21. Frankly, we don’t know how you …read more!