If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

What a shame. As a 10-year publishing phenomenon reaches its climax it’s been turned into nothing more than a supermarket price war.

This morning, or just after midnight last night to be accurate, the final volume in the seven-book Harry Potter saga went on sale, and his journey came to what Rowling called a pretty clear conclusion.

But the real story for media watchers is how the closing of the series has robbed publisher Bloomsbury of the clout it once had with the retail outlets. Throughout the life of the series it has been able to dictate on-sale dates and apply strict embargoes to which the publishers would stick. They did it ostensibly for the good of the reading public and avoid spoiling kids’ enjoyments of the fairly predictable surprises, but we all know that the real reason they’ve complied is that they’ve been terrified they might be robbed of the chance to sell the next instalment.

Well now there is no ‘next instalment’, and while nobody has broken the embargo - on this side of the Atlantic, at least - they are playing dirty on the price, using the book as a loss-leader to drag customers into their stores.

Bloomsbury sells it wholesale at a little over

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 3:57 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.