As Canadian Harry Potter fans joined others around the world anxiously awaiting the final book in the Harry Potter series, the Canadian publisher of the books expressed dismay about leaks of the book south of the border.
"My reaction would be one of disappointment to be honest about any media breaking the embargo," Jamie Broadhurst of Raincoast Books the Canadian publisher of the Harry Potter series told CTV's Canada AM.
"I think you probably heard comments from J.K. Rowling herself saying how disappointed she was herself to see that situation."
Rowling, the author of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," issued a statement on Thursday reacting to the fact that newspapers in the United States had decided to print reviews of the book ahead of its official availability.
The book is due in stores at one minute past midnight Saturday in North America and fans around the world had been lining up in advance to get a copy on Friday.
Rowling said that she was "staggered" by the decision of papers such as The New York Times to run reviews of final Harry Potter book ahead of the book's release. The reviews in the newspapers followed days of rumours and speculation over the book's availability on the Internet.
However, Broadhurst praised the efforts of Canadian fans of the series who had contacted the publishers to notify them of the availability of the book, in an effort to preserve the ending of the series.
"No doubt there will be some sort of commercial impact on the issue and that will have some legal bearing," said Broadhurst. "I can assure you for Raincoast our number one priority right now is a moral one, we've made a promise to our author to J.K. Rowling and to her fans around the world to do everything we can to insure the secret and that's our number one priority."
The publishing of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by Raincoast will be done on environmentally friendly paper. Raincoast were the first of the Harry Potter publishers around the world to take this initiative in 2002 and they will be joined by 16 additional publishers in the publication of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows."
"We estimate so far that we've saved over 70,000 trees in Canada publishing Harry Potter books and other Raincoast books since 2003 and it's something that we're proud of and frankly we're proud of it because it means so much to Canadian fans," Broadhurst said.
Nevertheless, the publication of the book will undoubtedly mean that a lot of paper, no matter what type, will be used. According to Broadhurst, 1 million to 1.3 million copies of the book will be available in stores in Canada.
"In Canada if you were to stack up every copy of Harry Potter that we'll be shipping out to customers across the country, it would be somewhere in the order of 110 times higher than the CN Tower," Broadhurst said. "So we're talking about an enormous amount of books."
