Time magazine has a new in- depth feature on the efforts used by the team at US Harry Potter publishers Scholastic, as they have gone about preparing for the release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” Detailing the steps the company went through, including a representative traveling to the UK to pick up the final manuscript of the last Harry Potter book (“To make absolutely sure the manuscript was safe on the plane, he sat on it”), to the efforts made by the truck delivering the book (“travel to stores on pallets, sealed in black plastic, in trucks tracked by GPS”), the article points out the extraordinary efforts at hand in order to preserve that special unspoiled moment when we Harry Potter fans pick up the last book for the first time.
“This is the moment of ineffable, intangible ecstasy that occurs when a reader opens his or her brand-new $34.99 copy of Deathly Hallows for the first time. “All the way through the process, everybody who touches this [manuscript] has the same goal in mind,” says Arthur A. Levine, Rowling’s editor. “Midnight. Kids.” The magic moment is a rare and delicate thing: it occurs only when the reader comes to the book in a state of pure ignorance, with no advance knowledge of its contents. For the magic moment to happen, the theory goes, the reader’s mind must be preserved in a state of absolute innocence—it must be, in Internet parlance, spoiler-free.”
The Harry Potter team at Scholastic is interviewed, including past PotterCast guest Cheryl Klein (aka Hotttt Cheryl) who details some of her job as an editor on the books, and what it was like for her when she traveled to the UK to pick up a revised edition of the precious manuscript.
Another early reader was a studious 28-year-old named Cheryl Klein, whose job title is continuity editor. Rowling’s books have become so complex—and their fans so obsessively nitpicky—that it takes a full-time Potterologist to make sure Rowling’s fictional universe stays factually consistent. “I keep track of all of the various proper nouns that appear in the series,” says Klein. “For instance, with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, I make sure it’s always B-o-t-t-apostrophe-s. Every Flavor is not hyphenated, and Flavor does not have a u.” It’s a tough beat: Klein acknowledges, for example, that in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Moaning Myrtle sits in a U-bend toilet, whereas in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, she occupies an S-bend toilet (this crept in, it should be noted, before Klein’s tenure, which began after Goblet). Klein has either the worst job in the world or the best, depending on how you look at it.
Like everyone else at Scholastic, Klein maintains the Harry Potter omertà. “Most people know better than to ask,” she says. “That includes my friends and my family and everyone else.” After Rowling revised the manuscript, per Levine’s and Klein’s suggestions, Klein flew to England to pick up the new draft. On her way home she was stopped for a random security check at Heathrow. “The woman opens up my bag, and she starts pawing through it. And she says, ‘Wow! You have a lot of paper here.’ And I thought, Oh, God, she’s going to look at it, and she’s going to see the names Harry and Ron and Hermione. But I just smiled, and I said, ‘Yes, a lot of paper!’ And she said, ‘Uh-huh,’ and she zipped it up. That was the end of the scariest two minutes of my life.”
The July 3 issue of Time Magazine will be on newsstands this weekend.
It is so awesome that someone is taking precautions to make sure there are no spoilers! I got hooked on HP late and this is my first – and last – time reading a HP book the day it comes out. It will be so special. I can’t wait til Deathly Hallows!!! :D
Once you place a text in a computer it can be pirated by a hacker. Let us hope that the secret will be welll kept till the end of the period. Once the book is out… anything can happen.
Reading the article and realizing the release of our final Harry Potter book is right around the corner brought a tear to my eye. I am NOT ready for it! This wait has just been too much fun. I wish we had more time. sigh
I understand what you mean kristi! I think my subconscious didn’t even acknowledge yet that the final book will be released soon. I can’t wait to read it but at the same time, I don’t feel excited because it hasn’t sunk it yet that it’s the very last book. It’s like I can’t believe it. I feel like it’s the 6th book again, like it’s not possible for Harry Potter to really end. At least there will still be the movies… but after that?? Noooo!! ...at least there will always be fanfics…right?
sigh I’m rereading the books and I’m still just reading the second… I think I’m subconsciously trying to push back the moment when I have to read the 7th book, because at this rate I won’t have finished the 6th book when Deathly Hallows comes out! I think also that I’m afraid to be disapointed, because with all those years of theorizing, I’ve come to really believe some things even thought they weren’t comfirmed (like Snape being on Dumbledore’s side) and I’m afraid to be proven wrong, and that the book will be less interresting for me because of it. I’m also afraid to be disapointed if there are questions that will stay unanswered….
Anyway, This article was very interresting! ...about the covers, well, I like the UK cover better… but mostly because I don’t get the US one. Why Harry looks so happy in it? I suppose it will make sense when I’ve read the book… but it’s just strange and I’m afraid of what it might mean…
mmm…quite frightened of spoilers…everyday i promise myself that I won’t look at any HP pages, anda every night I seem to have been around at least 5 times…lol
I am confused here. Here is the last HP book, knowing how much security and money has passed through this in 10 years, and she can’t take a private lear jet? Scholastic can surely afford that. And the security people would be told of what it is. No needing to search her bag! This is silly! The most important thing awaits us, and she just goes through a regular terminal? It would have been spoiled right there! Where was her security? Same thing happenned to Jo too.Well, I am awaiting them telling us they are printing it now..hope that is soon, for us to see!
Sitting on it? In a carry-on bag? I guess I’m showing my age if I say I expected it to be in a locked briefcase, handcuffed to her left wrist. Then again, the “Purloined Letter” approach seems to have worked, too. (See Edgar Allen Poe).
But sitting on hundreds of pages on an international flight—oh, her achin’ back!
As for paper, if the pages are camera-ready with
all the crop marks, etc, then it’s ready to go to press—literally. No electronics needed at that point. High-quality books have been published without computers for many, many decades.
lol… i love that he had to sit on it!!! and that wouldve been the scariest time of my life too…
i actually DONT want to know anything yet. i am incredibily pissed that i probably wont be in my house when my copy of DH arrives. i have to take my school senior pics at 3PM… hopefully the mailman will come before then… hopefully. but i dont want anything ruined for me. its already enough to have the covers and know that the last word is “scar”... if it still is.
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Posted by padfootrocksmysocks on June 29, 2007, 08:15 PM
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lol Kevin! some strange things happen to my posts too!
I like the sitting on the manuscript bit and the scariest two minutes at security! Makes you realise how dfficult it all is logistically.
I’m not seeing another soul (except for my husband) for three whole days when DH comes out, to make sure I’ve finished it before being spoiled (and it had better arrive on the Saturday 21st as promised otherwise my efforts will be ruined; I have to go into work on the Tuesday 24th)!
“You know, I kind of agree with the article when it says that spoilers don’t ruin a great book. It ruins the surprise, that “Oh My God!” Moment, but it doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of the book. I was spoiled about key moments from books 3, 5 and 6 and yet they still are the three best books I have ever read so far in 19 years of my life.”
Exactly, Luiz! Spoilers may rob you of that magical moment, which is really something precious and special and I pity the fools who can’t understand it, BUT there is more to the book than that singular magical moment. I thought the authors grasped and articulated that beautifully.
I’ve always wondered what real leverage Scholastic has with booksellers anymore, now that the threat of “we will withhold the next Potter book if you breach the contract” has gone away. I guess it all comes down to money—the financial penalties they can exact.
Remember the movie The Sixth Sense? I was the only person who hadn’t seen it in a room with 15 people who had. Once they realized I hadn’t seen it they all went strangely silent…slightly giving away that there must be a “trick”. Luckily, I was so ingrossed at the “critical moment” that I didn’t notice all eyes on me—waiting for the reaction. “OMG! He’s….”
So, when the authors of this article say there is no such thing as spoilers…Pa-lease!!! Let us get excited about a book!!! :)
Thanks to Jo & Scholastic for protecting my moment.
July 21st—12:01 am…my local bookstore…that would be me standing in line with my husband & our 1 1/2 month old strapped to my chest…purchasing books for each of us…
Harry took a pinch of Floo powder and walked to the edge of the fire. He took a deep breath, scattered the powder into the flames, and stepped forward; the fire felt like a warm breeze; he opened his mouth and immediately swallowed a lot of hot ash.[br]"D
Pinch was supposed to be punch, sorry obviously cannot spell