ususbaby.com Blog

I’ll admit upfront that I’ve never gotten into the Harry Potter hype. I read the first one just to see what all the excitement was about. Haven’t read one since. But, I know there are many, many people out there who are dedicated JK Rowling readers. I understand that the release of the final book was also a big deal…I’d been hearing about it for months and months. And in the last few days I’d been reading the articles about the growing international excitement (and “spoilers”).

So I wondered what the release time in Thailand (6:01 a.m.) would be like. I’d heard about a few parties in Bangkok, and I’d read that one of the bookstores here in Chiang Mai would open at 6 a.m. I figured with all the hype I’d heard that the book would be flying off the shelves like one of the series’ magical little things. Imagine my surprise, then, when yesterday afternoon I stopped by a bookstore and saw a display outside with copies of both Bloomsbury (the UK publisher) editions.

When I was inside buying some magazines, an English-and-Thai-speaking family came in asking “Do you have the Scholastic edition of Harry Potter?” This question surprised me (and the clerk, too, who offered both Bloomsbury editions from boxes in the store). I didn’t think there was any difference in the editions. And if I’d been a Harry Potter fan, I would’ve just been excited to find any copy that late in the day.

As they carried on their bilingual conversation, I started to think maybe it was because they’d bought the Scholastic (the US publisher) editions of the previous installments and wanted their library to look cohesive (I’m anal, I could understand that). But no; the grandmother then asked, “Is the Scholastic one different?” The clerk shook his head, but still the family must have been unconvinced. They left without the book.

So now I’m curious as to why readers might want the US edition versus one of the British ones. Are there illustrations? An extended ending? A foreword by some person more amazing than Harry? I looked online, and the only difference I’ve found is the page length (608 in the Bloomsbury editions and 784 in the Scholastic one), and that is apparently due only to layout elements like spacing. That leads me to believe that the family’s search might simply be due to the US company’s international marketing (I did notice that the Scholastic Harry Potter cover images have him growing up looking more and more like Harry’s movie image, and the book and movie have the same title font; whereas the Bloomsbury editions look much different from the movie-marketing campaigns).

And so now my curiosity leads me to ask any of you dear readers who are also Harry Potter fans to explain why the US edition might be a better buy or if it’s just that Scholastic has somehow managed to make its name synonomous with the series.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 2:43 pm and is filed under *Thailand, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.