The first "wrong" edition of Harry Potter sold at auction for 74 thousand dollars

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For the first time, the book "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by writer J. K. Rowling was published in 1997. One of the first edition books was recently sold at a London auction. This lot was purchased for $ 74,000.

For a book that was published relatively recently, this amount is quite large. The high cost of sale is due to the fact that the first print run was relatively small - only 500 books. Also, these books contained errors in the text. In subsequent editions, all previously made mistakes have been corrected. By the way, in the first edition there are not only spelling errors; on the cover, as the name of the author of the work, “J. K. Rowling ". Subsequently, all books of this writer were published with the indication of the author "J. K. Rowling".

The foreign edition says that the owner of a rather rare book, once acquired it at the railway station in the city of Harrogate, which is located in North Yorkshire. Then she was a schoolgirl. It has been 20 years since the purchase of the book "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", but the book has been preserved and is in perfect condition.

Initially, the price of this book was set at 46 thousand US dollars, but during the auction it increased significantly. A collector from the United States of America became the new owner of the rare edition. It is worth noting that $ 74,000 is not the highest price for Rowling's book yet. A similar book was auctioned last November 2017 for £ 106,250, which is about $ 140,000. The first edition of this book, which included notes from the writer herself, was sold at auction for 150 thousand pounds, which is about 227 thousand dollars.

Now it is difficult to believe that the first work about the wizard Harry Potter was very difficult to publish. It was initially rejected by 12 publishers. Only a small publisher called Bloomsbury decided to publish the book in a small print run. Immediately after the release, this book became in demand, which no one expected, and thanks to it, the turnover of a small publishing house has grown by as much as 150% in 4 years.

Now the circulation of the "Philosopher's Stone" alone is 100 million copies, in total, the circulation of all works about Harry Potter exceeds 500 million copies. The books have been translated and sold in 80 languages.