Fan scam alert: Harry Potter e-books

  January 9, 2005 at 9:22 PM ET
  Cheeser     HPANA
  harry potter ebooks, harry potter books, harry potter book 6

A web site purporting to offer electronic versions of all five Harry Potter novels by JK Rowling, including the unreleased sixth book, has sprung up and is advertising online to fans through search engines and ad-supported sites like HPANA. We have received numerous e-mails about this issue in the past several days.

DO NOT place any orders with a site claiming to sell such rubbish. It should be noted that there are no authorized electronic text versions of the Potter books, period. The sixth, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, is to be released July 16.

The Leaky Cauldron reported yesterday that after submitting an order on the site -- which will remain unnamed -- a message was returned stating that credit card processing was unsuccessful (after card numbers were already collected and presumably stored).

HPANA has contacted the site's web host to inform them of the illegal nature of their client's site. Rowling and/or her representatives have no doubt already been alerted to the situation. It's highly likely we'll hear something official very soon, in the form of a message from Jo on her web site, or through one of her representatives.

UPDATE: According to BBC News the web site in question has been closed down.