After finding a literary agent, the next\u00a0task was finding a publisher to publish the first book. After 12 publishing houses declined to publish Harry Potter<\/em>, including giants like Penguin, Transworld and HarperCollins, a relatively small publisher just starting its children’s literature division gave Harry a chance. Bloomsbury, and\u00a0Barry Cunningham,\u00a0 its children’s literature\u00a0department head at the time, took on its publication after having lunch with Rowling and telling her that there was no financial reward in children’s\u00a0books. It was also at this time the publisher suggested changing her pen name to J.K. Rowling, though in the first edition’s prints the copyright page attributes the text to Joanne Rowling, Rowling’s full name.<\/p>\n In total, the first impression of the first edition published in 1997 consisted of a few thousand paperback first prints were made along with a small print of 500 hardcover varients, 300 of which went to libraries. UBC now owns one of these 500, presumably one of the 200 that weren’t\u00a0shelved in a library due to the little wear the book displays. Bloomsbury continues to publish the Harry Potter\u00a0<\/em>series today, though the screenplay for the spin-offs\u00a0Fantastic Beasts the Movie <\/em>and Cursed Child\u00a0<\/em>are published by Little, Brown and Company.<\/p>\n One might think Rowling’s luck would run out after 2 people stumbled upon her book based on what seems like luck and chance, but luck continued to find her which led to the publication of\u00a0philosopher’s stone<\/em> in the United States. Arthur Levine, Scholastics\u00a0Book’s editorial director in the US, was in Italy at a children’s\u00a0literature fair where he found a proof of Rowling’s soon to be published book and read it on the plane ride home. He instantly liked the book, much like the Bloomsbury staffers and Little the literary agent before him.\u00a0 He purchased the American\u00a0publication rights after outbidding competitors\u00a0at $105 000, the largest amount ever paid to a children’s lit author at the time. the newly retitled and modified\u00a0Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone\u00a0<\/em>for the US market was released in August 1998. Though over 35 000 first editions were printed, the first print was a fraction of that and has a dust cover with a quotation from\u00a0The Guardian<\/em> rather than a blurb from\u00a0Publisher’s Weekly.\u00a0<\/em>Scholastics books (often using its imprint Arthur Levine press) continues to publish the Harry Potter<\/em> series and related texts in the US.<\/p>\n Unlike the publication history of the series in the UK and US, publication of\u00a0Harry Potter\u00a0<\/em>in Canada\u00a0is not as easy to delineate.\u00a0 The beginning\u00a0of the sale of\u00a0Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone\u00a0<\/em>came in 1998 when Vancouver’s own Kidsbooks, an independent children’s\u00a0bookshop, convinced Raincoast Books, then the Bloomsbury\u00a0distributor and importer in Canada, to bring in 400 copies of\u00a0Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone<\/em>. After this, according to Raincoast Books president Allan MacDougall, they inquired with Bloomsbury about the publication rights of the book, and were told Scholastic had the rights to the entire North American market. According to MacDougall, though,\u00a0 in October of 1999 he “ran into the man who had been kids\u2019 editor at Bloomsbury when Rowling was signed. [and] said, \u2018You bastard\u2019\u2014we\u2019re old friends, you know\u2014\u2018why didn\u2019t you get us the Canadian rights?\u2019 [to which] He gave [him] a funny look and told [him] to check the Scholastic contract.” After looking into the contract with Bloomsbury’s president, it was realized Scholastic did not own the Canadian rights and they were in fact up for grabs so to speak. In fact, Bloomsbury asked them if they wanted to publish the books in Canada instead of simply importing them, something which Raincoast enthusiastically accepted.<\/p>\n It is here where the story gets a bit less clear.\u00a0 The first book printed in Canada by Raincoast was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets<\/em>, and Philosophers Stone<\/em> in paperback proceeded it sometime after. There is no definitive date for the first print of\u00a0Philosopher’s Ston<\/em>e in Hardcover. There are many listings from booksellers purporting to be selling the Canadian first print, and with research done by UBC’s library staff, it’s hard to determine what the first actual hardcover printing of the text might be. UBC’s copy displays consistency with the third print of the Bloomsbury edition, but has the Raincoast wordmark on the spine rather than the Bloomsbury wordmark, and has a copyright page signifying that it was printed and bound in Canada. Because of this, and the fact that it was printed with the only\u00a0Chamber of Secrets<\/em> as “other books in this series” opposite the title page, It can be assumed that this might be the first run published in Canada. From the perspective of Raincoast, when UBC RBSC staff and other. Raincoast asserts that all editions they printed had both Bloomsbury and Raincoast’s logos on the spine, which the UBC copy does not have, but every copy with these markings seem to be based on later prints of the British text, after\u00a0Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban<\/em> was added to the “other titles in this series” page. Though there is no definitive proof that the text UBC possesses is the true ‘Canadian First Edition”, it seems likely this is the case. Other editions are based off of later British prints of the text, and it seems unlikely they would reprint an old version of the text after already printing newer variants. As well, the binding and copyright pages don’t seem to show any signs of being replaced, and it seems unlikely someone would attempt to mimic a Canadian first print in this way as they are not as valuable as a UK first would be.<\/p>\n Another interesting point found in the search for the Canadian first print is that Scholastic actually did print a Canadian edition exclusively for its education market. Some rare booksellers claim this to be the first Canadian printing, or at least the first Canadian paperback, however, the copy I could find online listed all books in the series up until\u00a0Prisoner of Azkaban\u00a0<\/em>and thus would logically be printed after the Raincoast copy UBC RBSC has in its collection. The reason this is interesting is that this would have been after it was discovered Scholastic did not have the right to distribute\u00a0Philosophers Stone<\/em> in Canada, but yet they were able to do so for school use. As well, the edition published is not the American Scholastic books text but a Bloomsbury edition rebranded in Scholastics Canada Markings, which could mean that Bloomsbury and Raincoast had agreed to allow Scholastics Canada to distribute this book to schools, a market which they have an advantage in.<\/p>\n After the shuttering of Raincoast’s publishing arm in 2010, Penguin Random-House took over the rights to the\u00a0Harry Potter\u00a0<\/em>series in Canada, and today books sold are sold under the Bloomsbury USA publishing banner. Like in the UK, spinoff books like the screenplays for\u00a0Cursed Child\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Fantastic Beasts<\/em> were not published by Bloomsbury but rather were sold off to Scolastics press.<\/p>\n The French version of the text sold in Canada is published by\u00a0Gallimard Jeunesse in Paris and is called Harry Potter a\u0300 l’e\u0301cole des sorciers<\/em><\/p>\n Bethune, Brian. \u201cHarry Potter Inc.\u201d <\/span>Macleans Magazine<\/span><\/i>, July 17, 2000, 42-45.<\/span><\/p>\n Davies, Richard. \u201cA Guide to Collecting Harry Potter Books.\u201d AbeBooks.com (Accessed April 16, 2018. https:\/\/www.abebooks.com\/docs\/harry-potter\/hp-collecting-guide.shtml).<\/span><\/p>\n Gunelius, Susan. <\/span>Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon (<\/span><\/i>Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) p. 4-8.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Publication in Britain After finding a literary agent, the next\u00a0task was finding a publisher to publish the first book. After 12 publishing houses declined to publish Harry Potter, including giants like Penguin, Transworld and HarperCollins, a relatively small publisher just starting its children’s literature division gave Harry a chance. Bloomsbury, and\u00a0Barry Cunningham,\u00a0 its children’s literature\u00a0department … <\/p>\nPublication in the United States of America<\/h4>\n
Publication in Canada<\/h4>\n
\n