The grocer begged customers to return the books, but if they refused, Canadian publisher Raincoast Book Distribution sought an unprecedented injunction from a provincial court to keep the storyline a secret.
…Justice Kristi Gill ordered the 14 customers not to talk about the book, copy it, sell it or read it until after midnight on this upcoming Saturday.
When I worked at Borders, it was absolutely critical that books never went on the shelves prior to the release date. Bookstores and publishers take this very, very, very seriously. I do wonder, however, where the hell our priorities are, when we treat the release of a popular writer’s work as though it contains potent secrets that must be carefully managed. I mean, a judge got involved, fercryinoutloud!
I’m only guessing, but perhaps there’s a worry about piracy.
Some while back a big-time computer game was released at one outlet a few days early.
Not long after, when the official release arrived, bootleg copies were already being widely sold in the orient. Moreover . . .
Sorry to disagree, but I don’t find anything objectionable about protecting Ms. Rowling’s contract agreements.
Why the indignation? Shouldn’t courts adjudicate minor legal matters until all the woes of the world have been solved first?
But piracy is a problem regardless of when an item is released.
What inspired the bemused indignation is the seriousness with which all this is treated. Granted, there is a contract which designated a day, but it’s arbitrarily set, and then it’s hyped as though the release is the Second Coming. There are times when I grow weary of a world in which we are marketed to so heavily. What seemed ludicrous, to me, was that a store owner begged customers to return the books, and that a judge ordered them not to even read it before the release date. Much ado about a book strikes me as overkill.
Certainly, all the hoopla does create an atomsphere of excitement. I know several people who plan to attend midnight bookstore parties at Barnes & Noble to get in line to buy their copy first. While I enjoy Rowling’s books, I have never been so enamored of any author to go that far, and I am sometimes puzzled about all the fuss.
To each her own…