Assorted Afflatuses

On Friday evening, as I opened my web browser to Amazon.com to check the status of a shipment, I noticed a new banner on the homepage. Amazon.com, it seems, paid nearly $4 million to obtain the only publicly-available copy of Joanne Rowling's Tales of the Beetle Bard at a Sotheby's auction on 13 December.

I, for one, never understood why Ms. Rowling limited the distribution of the Tales to the handful of copies she bequeathed to people deeply connected with the Potter series, in addition to the one copy sold at auction for the benefit of a children's charity. Had her goal been to raise money for children in need, she could have easily arranged something with her publisher. A one-time $4 million donation from Amazon.com will doubtlessly do a great deal of good, but Ms. Rowling could do far more by donating the royalties earned from a publicly available printing.

The restricted distribution of the Tales also seemed a rather cruel act coming from such a benevolent person. I have no doubt that every Harry Potter fanatic would love to take in every word on each of the Tales's 157 pages. By confirming the existence of the book and denying all but a few people access, Ms. Rowling disappointed many.

Fortunately, though, Amazon.com — not a narcissistic, reclusive rare book collector — purchased the one copy available to members of the public with the purchasing power to acquire a $4 million book. Employees of the Seattle-based retailer have also confirmed that the company will take their copy of Tales of the Beedle Bard on a book tour to libraries across the United States.

But, when I gave the matter more thought, I realized the lunacy of the situation. Amazon.com paid four million dollars for a book! Few volumes have ever fetched such huge sums at auction. An original Guttenberg Bible or a copy of Shakespeare's First Folio might garner a $5 million bid, but the average rare book — a first edition of Joyce's Ulysses or Dickens's Oilver Twist — would only muster $20 or $30 thousand, even if it were in mint condition with the original dust jacket. In fact, the expert appraisers and auctioneers at Sotheby's only expected Tales of the Beedle Bard to fetch $100,000, which, in and of itself, would have been an exceptional price.

I enjoyed Harry Potter as much as the next person, and I think its remarkable popularity has earned it a special place in the history of literature. Putting a derivative work on the level of Shakespeare, however, is absolutely outrageous.

But what do I know? Perhaps, 2,000 years from now, Nad Umber will pen The Potter Prophecy, a mystery-thriller about a lost manuscript that casts doubts onto accepted religious beliefs.