BOOK MANIA | Was the Harry Potter leak a publicity stunt?

That’s the buzz on the Internet rumour mill. Last week Real Canadian Superstore in Coquitlam, B.C. “accidentally” sold a few copies of the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and a media frenzy followed. Now, one expert has spoken out to say that he thinks the hoopla was a whole lot of hooey.

Lindsay Meredith, a Simon Fraser University marketing strategies professor, spoke to Canadian Press about the rumour, saying “my straight-up hunch is this is some of the best damned PR I’ve seen in a while. They didn’t pay a penny for it and it’s way more powerful than advertising.”

He thinks the leak and subsequent hullaballoo had an impact potentially 20 times greater than any advertisement the publisher could have come up with.

Following the leak, Raincoast Book Distribution Ltd. obtained a B.C. Supreme Court injunction preventing anyone who had obtained a copy of the book from sharing or leaking it further. They also appealed to anyone who’d bought it early to return it, attempting to tempt them with a free gift package of exclusive Potter merch in exchange.

The story about the leak, and Raincoast’s efforts to contain it, was published in newspapers around the world.

Even before all this went down, the Harry Potter marketing machine was one of epic proportions. Raincoast’s website lists more than three hundred official Canadian events scheduled to mark the book’s launch, and there are of course countless more happening worldwide.

Parties range from bookstore gatherings, to more extensive costume-themed events, to the massive press conference weekend at Edinburgh Castle, Scotland, where attendees will get to meet J.K. Rowling herself.

Raincoast denies that the leak was deliberate (of course). If it was a publicity stunt, it was a great one, and admitting it would make no sense at all.

2018: A version of this piece published in Dose on July 14, 2005. See clipping below. More book pieces are here. I wrote a predictions piece about the book that published in Dose a few days after this one. I also started blogging around this time. All I could think about was Harry. I was obsessed.

Published in Dose, July 14, 2005.