Collector's Edition

In celebration of Harry Potter's birthday (who happens to share a birthday with his creator, J.K. Rowling), this morning, millions of Harry Potter fans around the world woke up (or will soon wake up) to some very exciting news: the announcement of the worldwide release of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a very special book of five fairy tales written to supplement the Harry Potter series. In December 2007, Amazon was fortunate to come into possession of one of the original copies and it was our privilege to share images and reviews of this incredible artifact. Available in a standard edition and a collector's edition, which is exclusive to Amazon.com, these new editions of The Tales of Beedle the Bard will be available on December 4, 2008.

The Standard Edition features all five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard, an introduction and illustrations by J.K. Rowling, and commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore.

Housed in its own slipcase--made to resemble a wizarding textbook found in the Hogwarts library--the luxuriously packaged Collector's Edition includes metal corners, clasp, and skull; a reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction; commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore; and 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition (or the original).

In a press release Rowling said: "There was understandable disappointment among Harry Potter fans when only one copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard was offered to the public last December.  I am therefore delighted to announce that, thanks to the generous support of Bloomsbury, Scholastic, and Amazon (who bought the handwritten copy at auction)--and with the blessing of the wonderful people who own the other six original books--The Tales of Beedle the Bard will now be widely available to all Harry Potter fans."

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is published by The Children's High Level Group (CHLG), registered charity number 1112575, a charity co-founded in 2005 by J.K. Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP to make life better for vulnerable children. All net proceeds from the sale will be donated to The Children's Voice campaign.

 

--BTP

Calling all Harry Potter fans!
Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. But hurry--submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. 

If you haven’t already, take a look at The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

As you may have heard, J.K. Rowling has created a new book of fairy tales, but unlike her last book, which has reached print runs in the tens of millions, this one has a very limited edition: seven. Handwritten and illustrated by Rowling herself and bound in morocco leather, silver ornaments, and semi-precious stones, The Tales of Beedle the Bard is a collection of five wizarding fairy tales. (The tales played a crucial role in the plot of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after Dumbledore left them to Hermione Granger, but only one of them, "The Tale of the Three Brothers," was included in the story.) Of the seven copies, Rowling gave six to "those most intimately involved" with the Potter books (names as yet unknown), and the last was auctioned off this morning at Sotheby's in London, with proceeds going to The Children's Voice, an organization cofounded by Rowling that campaigns for children's rights.

The book, which according to the AP was expected to sell for around $100,000, ended up selling for 1.95 million pounds (or, given the state of the U.S. dollar these days, $3.98 million). The buyer was unknown at the time of purchase, but later today was revealed to be ... Amazon.com. So needless to say, you can now read more about the book on our site, including some lovely photographs, a few of which I've added below. And there's an already-busy discussion board, where we (and our customers) are answering as many questions as we can about the book. --Tom

As you might have heard, this is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's Beat bible, On the Road. Kerouac, who spent the rest of his short career trying to live up to, or live down, his blockbuster book, might be glad he doesn't have to witness the festivities, but his readers should be happy to be here. As anyone who's turned one of those big round numbers knows, birthdays can feel arbitrary and absurd, but they often bring good things, in this case new editions and new looks at a book that has turned out to live far beyond its fleeting moment. The Library of America has welcomed Kerouac as the first Beat writer in its red-white-and-blue ranks (unless you want to count Paul Bowles) with Jack Kerouac: Road Novels 1957-1960, and Viking, the original publisher of On the Road, is publishing three books: a 50th anniversary edition of On the Road, On the Road: The Original Scroll (the full text of Kerouac's famous 120-foot scroll that he typed a draft of the book on in one three-week sprint six years before it was published), and Why Kerouac Matters, a short new tribute from John Leland, author of Hip: The History, that argues that On the Road is not the book we've thought it was these 50 years. On our pages for the anniversary and scroll editions, we have some nice extras, including Kerouac's hand-drawn map of the cross-country travels that were the basis for the book and Gilbert Millstein's prescient original New York Times review, which is reprinted in the anniversary edition.

Two of my favorite critics, David Gates in Newsweek and Luc Sante in the New York Times Book Review, have long, appreciative pieces on the anniversary books this week. What I love is that they both pick out the same famous line to compare between the draft and the final version, and they completely disagree about it. Here's how it reads in the 1951 scroll:

and here's the final 1957 version:

Sante prefers the scroll's more stripped-down version, calling Kerouac's additions "eager-beaver poeticizing." Gates, though, argues, "This is Kerouac finding his true voice and true subject: beyond the trite Roman candles to the explosion, the spiders, the stars--and then the deflationary exhalation." I think I'm with Sante on this one (although I do like the addition of "mad to be saved")--what do you think?

I asked John Leland a few questions about his new book and about Kerouac, but this post is long enough already, so I'll post his answers separately. --Tom

Tony Blair steps down after 10 years. Want to know something about his assumed successor, Gordon Brown, who's been waiting in the wings for almost that whole time? UK books here, here, and here. And in the tradition of JFK and John McCain, he's written a book on Courage.

A little late on this, but Sarah Weinman, mystery-book blogger whose is "probably the only person among litbloggers, book reviewers and other literary types whose first language is Yiddish," gives a somewhat contrarian take on Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union. (Via Maud Newton)

Speaking of YPU (and aren't we all--I'm in the middle of reading it myself), Max at The Millions blogs about limited editions, including the apparently quite gorgeous, wood-boxed Yiddish Policemen's Union we have for sale for only $116.99. It does not appear, however, to include the superduperest tchotchke included in the fancy prepublication package the publishers sent out: a District of Sitka World's Fair shot glass, complete with a 50 ml bottle of plum brandy (see page 2 of the novel).

Three-time novelist and five-time Jeopardy champ Arthur Phillips answers questions at the Elegant Variation. One note: when asked the "best author we've never heard of" he cites, without explanation, this excellent hoaxer, whom I celebrated in this space last year.

USA Today reports on a Hill-bio throw-down among prestigious imprints: when Geoff Shandler, Little, Brown editor of Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta's Her Way (the one with Clinton facing left on the cover), wondered how "objective and critical" Knopf, publisher of A Woman in Charge (Hillary facing right), can be, given that they publish Bill, legendary Knopf publicity director Paul "Bogie" Bogaards shot back, "It's ludicrous for Little, Brown to suggest that. They should be very careful if they're going down that road."

Today marks, along with the birth of Amazon Daily as our new blog platform, the publication date of The Children of Húrin, the "first complete book by J.R.R. Tolkien in three decades." The book is not completely new--parts of the material has appeared in The Silmarillion, among other places--but it is the fullest retelling available of the third of Tolkien's "great tales." It was "completed" by Tolkien's son Christopher, but only in the sense that he brought its existing strands together from his father's published and unpublished writings: every word in the book is Tolkien's. As we've noted in a couple recent posts, the early reviews are coming in this week. Today, Lev Grossman in Time writes that once you get past the "faux-archaic diction," "it's a huge pleasure to be back in Middle Earth, and to see people and places that Tolkien only alludes to glancingly elsewhere. There's plenty of lore for the scholars and superfans, and there's no shortage of elves and dwarves and mighty smiting for the casual fan."

The new book includes illustrations (a dozen of them in full-page color) by Alan Lee, who was already a famed fantasy illustrator (for his early collaboration, Faeries, as well as his Tolkien editions) before he won an Oscar as the conceptual designer of the somewhat successful film trilogy. On our page for the new book, you can see two of Lee's new illustrations as well as an essay on how the full tale came to be published by Adam Tolkien, J.R.R.'s grandson and Christopher's son. And we have a short Q&A there with Alan Lee, but there's one question that we saved for the blog:

It turns out he captured that very moment, and he sent along the photographic proof:

Visitors to Seattle wishing to repeat it for themselves can stop by here. --Tom, Amazon Bookstore

My very first job at Amazon, way back in the fall of 1999, was working with rare-and-collectible booksellers, helping them list their titles on the site. I've always enjoyed collecting books (in the sense that I hang on to the books I read), and almost every available square foot of real estate in my apartment is taken up by books--on shelves, on tables, and piled in waist-high stacks. I also have a decent selection of signed editions on display. There isn't much of a focus to the collectible nature of these titles--they run from Pulitzer-Prize winners to a signed first edition of The Da Vinci Code to a bookplate signed by Harper Lee). For me, it's not about the value (they're certainly not all in mint condition), but about the tactile pleasure of the book itself (and often my memory of meeting the author).

In this Sunday's Book Review, Rachel Donadio offers a profile of Manhattan rare-book dealer Glenn Horowitz, who's described as equal parts "scholar" and "grifter." He's famous for many high-profile deals, including the $1 million sale of Vladimir Nabokov's literary estate to the New York Public Library in 1992. Horowtiz expresses "a belief that books will gain increasingly fetishistic status in the digital age." He certainly has a valid argument there. More and more, I'm coming across articles about books as accessories--grouping your art books in neat piles based on the color of the dust-jacket, selecting titles that "go with" the decor of a room.

Donadio mentions that several well-known people stopped by Horowitz's office during the interview, including a cameo from James Frey. The biggest tease, though, has to be this passage:

Dear readers and publishing insiders... any guesses on the author of this rarity? The mention of "one of most famous American writers," "celebrated editor," and "exceedingly rare manuscript" seem to offer some decent context clues. The off-the-record nature makes me think it has to be J.D. Salinger. Any thoughts? --Brad, Amazon Bookstore

The new (February) issue of Harper's has a wonderful couple of pieces on originality and plagiarism: one a paired response to a controversy over artistic ownership from the painter Joy Garnett, who used a photograph of a man about to throw a Molotov cocktail as the basis for a painting, and Susan Meiselas, the photojournalist who shot the original photo of a Sandinista rebel and who objects to its use out of historical context. (You can see Garnett's painting here (scroll down); the original photograph I believe was in Meiselas's book Nicaragua, the first edition of which is currently going for $1498.87 on our site, so originals do still retain some value!)

The other is novelist Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence," a rather thrilling defense of the artist's right (and duty) to borrow, steal, allude, echo, repeat, rework, and rob. Art, he argues, is part of the gift economy as well as the market economy, and he closes with this call:

By the way, you'll notice no links above to the Harper's pieces. Funny enough, the two pieces on appropriation don't live (yet, at least) on the limited Harper's website, preventing them from being easily appropriated by the likes of me.

Meanwhile, at the same time I happened to be reading Lethem's upcoming novel, You Don't Love Me Yet, due out in March (that must be a young Lethem on the cover, looking very Jason Schwartzman). It's a slight thing after the intense, chewy drama of The Fortress of Solitude, and I think intentionally so: a "romantic farce" about a fledgling LA rock band. It's about originality and ownership too (no one's sure who's responsible for creating the band's songs). I read it happily in a single night. I'm not sure how long it will stay with me, and it can't bear much comparison to Lethem's major books, but I thought it was notable at least for bravely (and, to me, successfully) making its most dramatic moments out of two of the hardest things to write well (and originally) about: sex and rock & roll. --Tom, Amazon Bookstore