Harry Potter user’s manual hits bookstores
Did the controversial guide gain from Rowling’s lawsuit?
When Steve Vander Ark, a Michigan librarian and highly regarded Harry Potter expert, wrote his guide to Harry’s fictional universe, publisher RDR Books planned a modest print run. But after Vander Ark and RDR lost a widely publicized lawsuit launched by Potter author J.K. Rowling, who claimed the book had “virtually no original commentary of its own,” Vander Ark revamped it until it met with Rowling’s approval, and RDR quadrupled its first printing of The Lexicon: An Unauthorized Guide to Harry Potter Fiction and Related Materials to 40,000. The first copies hit bookshops today.
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