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Potter pirates helped book sales

Patti Waldmeir, writing in the FT, reckons that the illegal release of the latest Harry Potter book on the internet did the Potter publishers a favour.

"Reading electronic books is no fun at the best of times: only the stingiest fan would prefer 759 pages of scarcely legible Potter online to the $18 Amazon version. But headlines about the leaks were priceless: according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, only 8 per cent of Americans were closely following Harry news a week before the July 21 release. But everyone loves a secret breached, so all the buzz over online leaks gave Harry an all-new news profile in the final hours of his seclusion. America’s top booksellers insisted not a single reader would be lost to all that piracy; at least they know good news when they see it."

FT

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