Book Festival clamps down on Rowling tickets on eBay
August 13, 2004 at 11:17 AM ET
Geri
Wizard News (via The Scotsman)
edinburgh international book festival, jk rowling
Tickets to attend JK Rowling's appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this Sunday are so sought after
that four of the 500 tickets originally given out to fans via an impartial ballot have appeared on eBay. But when Book Festival organizers and JK Rowling's publicity team heard about this they immediately contacted eBay and requested that the auction be removed from the site.
A spokeswoman for JK Rowling said they had acted quickly to ensure the tickets were not sold on.
"This was brought to our attention by a fan and we were obviously concerned. We contacted eBay and asked them to remove the tickets from sale, as they were never intended to be sold like this.
It was a very naughty thing to try and do. This is the only incident we’ve heard of and we would hope that with the appearance coming up quite soon it will be the first and last incident."
According to Olivier Joly, of the Edinburgh Book Festival:
"People who have been allocated tickets each have their own ticket and selling them on is not allowed. Because of the security measures we have put in place I would not expect any more people trying to sell the tickets.
To be honest, most people wouldn't part with them, they are families with young children and more than anything they want to meet JK Rowling."
This appearance in Edinburgh by Rowling will be the author's first public reading in four years, and will be her only book event this year.
Earlier, CBBC Newsround offered one lucky soul a chance to attend the festival and ask Rowling a question.