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One More Day
Jun. 20th, 2003 10:12 amAnd the hype over Harry Potter will finally blow over and the actual reading can begin. I'm hating the media circus more with every book, and I know that we ain't seen nothing yet - the insanity surrounding Book 7 is doubtless going to be unimaginable.
What I don't understand is why.
Why is the release of a book, no matter how popular the series, somehow treated with more security and secrecy than the war plans in Iraq? It's no good pinning this one on the fans; what the fans have done is simply preorder the book from bookstores and libraries. They're not scrambling for headlines.
Report after report of lawsuits because excerpts - or merely reviews! - have been released just a few days early is deliberately wagging the dog, creating the news instead of reporting it. The preorder sales are already huge, do they really think that this thing is going to tank? That people will somehow call Amazon tonight and say "I read a spoiler in the newspaper, cancel my order"?
So why is the whole Razzle-Dazzle media circus going at hyperspeed over issues that will shortly be moot? OMG, the Monteal Gazette said they liked the book a full 3 days early! Alert the media! Call out the guards! Line up the lawyers! The NY Daily Times printed a page! Call the President! Last book and this book, a couple people got ahold of advance copies... and the world kept turning. Hell, half.com and ebay are full of advance copies of other books, and nobody's getting their legal knickers in a knot, much less making multiple pages of headlines on google news.
Tomorrow we get to stop being force-fed all the tired old refrains about how terribly, terribly, cosmically important it is that not a single spoiler get out there, and all the armed guards on the books, and all the legal posturing, and actually get to DISCUSS THE BOOK.
I can't wait.
What I don't understand is why.
Why is the release of a book, no matter how popular the series, somehow treated with more security and secrecy than the war plans in Iraq? It's no good pinning this one on the fans; what the fans have done is simply preorder the book from bookstores and libraries. They're not scrambling for headlines.
Report after report of lawsuits because excerpts - or merely reviews! - have been released just a few days early is deliberately wagging the dog, creating the news instead of reporting it. The preorder sales are already huge, do they really think that this thing is going to tank? That people will somehow call Amazon tonight and say "I read a spoiler in the newspaper, cancel my order"?
So why is the whole Razzle-Dazzle media circus going at hyperspeed over issues that will shortly be moot? OMG, the Monteal Gazette said they liked the book a full 3 days early! Alert the media! Call out the guards! Line up the lawyers! The NY Daily Times printed a page! Call the President! Last book and this book, a couple people got ahold of advance copies... and the world kept turning. Hell, half.com and ebay are full of advance copies of other books, and nobody's getting their legal knickers in a knot, much less making multiple pages of headlines on google news.
Tomorrow we get to stop being force-fed all the tired old refrains about how terribly, terribly, cosmically important it is that not a single spoiler get out there, and all the armed guards on the books, and all the legal posturing, and actually get to DISCUSS THE BOOK.
I can't wait.
