Copies of New ‘Harry Potter’ Book Found in Field
LONDON (Reuters) – Publishers of the best-selling Harry Potter books launched an investigation on Tuesday after a newspaper reported that advance copies of the long-awaited fifth installment were found dumped in a field.
Bloomsbury Publishing said it suspected first editions of author J.K Rowling’s latest boy wizard saga, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” had been stolen from a nearby printworks.
“The matter is currently under investigation, with the suspicion that theft is involved,” Rowling’s publisher and agent said in a brief joint statement.
The fifth Harry Potter installment is due out on June 21 and is expected to smash publishing records.
Bloomsbury said it had yet to report the matter to police and declined to give more details.
The Sun newspaper reported that a man stumbled across the books on Monday as he walked near a printworks in the small town of Bungay, in Suffolk, eastern England.
It said the 40-year-old father-of-two had contacted the paper and handed over the books.
The copies will be returned to the publishers and no details of the closely-guarded plot will appear in the paper, the Sun said.
Printer Clays Ltd, which is churning out hundreds of thousands of the books, declined to comment. News International, the Sun’s publishers, said it would release a statement later on Tuesday.
The first four books about the teenage wizard have now sold almost 200 million copies in 55 languages and 200 countries.
The last Harry Potter book, “Goblet of Fire,” broke records everywhere and is still on bestseller lists around the globe.
Rowling, who wrote the first book as a penniless single mother in an Edinburgh cafe, is now richer than Queen Elizabeth with a personal fortune put at 280 million pounds ($450 million).
The teenage wizard has also taken to the silver screen, grossing more than $1.7 billion in two films.
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