…in releasing Harry Potter at the same time. According to The Natal Witness, South Africa’s Jonathan Ball Publishers “are embargoed from selling the book until 00:01 am BST (British Summer Time) on Saturday, June 21”.

– the segment will air about 40 mins later than planned, so listen around 8:45 to 9:30ish EST. 🙂 It might be even later than that, but I won’t be around to update. If anyone does catch it and can zap us an MP3, it would be fantastic! Thanks!

Some of our readers have pointed out that the book release is on the eve of the Summer Solstice otherwise known as Midsummer or Litha. I know a lot of Witches who will be celebrating more than one thing that night.

The Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Pittsford, NY is already considering plans for a midnight opening.

This is great – Amazon has put out a press release stating that “Order of the Phoenix” has already jumped to #1 on their Best Seller’s List within Two Hours of being listed for pre-orders.

We’ve added comments to posts now – though we are working out some kinks, be advised our rules go like this (and will be posted in the comment box itself soon): We reserve the right to delete any comments that contain flames, “curse” words, telephone numbers, addresses, or any private (i.e. not reported in the …read more!

I’ll be on Radio Five Live on BBC this evening (somewhere between 8 and 8:30 pm EST) to discuss the release of the book, fan expectation, fan rumors, and all other things “fan”. You can listen at that link (I hope!).

Today is the last day to register for Nimbus – 2003 (the first international Harry Potter symposium) at the initial rate of $99.75 – tomorrow, the registration fee goes up by thirty dollars. Hundreds of HP fans (including some well respected authors and scholars from around the world) have already registered – and the list …read more!

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets has won the award for Best Live Action Family Film from the Phoenix Film Critics Society. In addition, Emma Watson was honoured in the Best Performance by a Youth – Female category. (Thank you to Caroline for the link.)

A lot of you have been throwing around this “768” pages thing. That’s roughly what GoF was, though a Bloomsbury email is quoting that length for OotP, which is bizarre. The official information released is that it’s 255,000 words as opposed to 191,000 words in GoF. At 250 words per page (an average estimate), that’s …read more!