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Asda plans Bloomsbury 'talks'

17.07.07 Graeme Neill

Asda said this afternoon that it is keen to talk to Bloomsbury to ensure the final Harry Potter novel is in its stores this Saturday. The past 24 hours have seen an increasingly ferocious war of words between the publisher and the supermarket chain, with Bloomsbury instigating legal action for defamation and cancelling all book orders with the supermarket--including half a million copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Bloomsbury had stressed that the move was unrelated to Asda's press release last weekend, which claimed the publisher was "attempting to hold children to ransom" by raising the price of Harry Potter to £17.99. It said the cancellation of orders was over £38,000 owed by Asda for unauthorised returns of the sixth Harry Potter book. But a Bloomsbury spokesman said earlier today that the libel claim would now have to be dealt with before the Asda order was reinstated. "The ball is in their court. If they want their 500,000 books, they will have to come and make peace with us," a Bloomsbury spokesman said.

In response, a spokesperson for Asda told The Bookseller this afternoon that the supermarket "understood" the issues surrounding the unpaid bills but had resolved them. "Things have moved on since then and we want to talk to Bloomsbury in order to get Harry Potter into our stores at the best price for its release on Saturday," she said.

Retail harry potter Bloomsbury Graeme Neill Asda

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