PowellsBooks.Blog
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Ms. Rowling has supported much of the fan output, doling out awards to Internet sites and granting interviews to Web masters. But when RDR Books, a small publisher in Muskegon, Mich., announced it was planning to publish a print version last fall of a popular fan Web site called “The Harry Potter Lexicon” (hp-lexicon.org), Ms. Rowling and Warner Brothers, the movie studio that has adapted her books into films, balked. Their objection is that the book merely repackages Ms. Rowling’s work and, unlike the free fan sites, is intended to make money for its publisher.

David Hammer, [a] lawyer representing RDR Books, said he believed that Ms. Rowling was acting out of vanity. “She wants to be the only one to write this encyclopedia about Harry Potter,” he said. “She’s determined to write it, and she doesn’t want competitors.”

But Galley Cat brings up the interesting point of how this case will affect all other printed mediums that refer to other people's works, like say... blogs or book reviews.

If Warner and Rowling win, it could set a dangerous precedent for authors to invoke copyright infringement on any work, from reviews to companion guides that they don't agree with. Just imagine the New York Times being sued for a negative review because it cites material contained within a novel, and the author wants to be compensated for loss of revenue because of it. It's a 1984 double plus good scenario, but stranger things have happened.

I'm holding my breath...

Thomas Kohnstamm, who has written a book on his misadventures, also said he didn't travel to Colombia to write the guidebook on the country because "they didn't pay me enough," The Daily Telegraph reported. "I wrote the book in San Francisco [California]," he is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. "I got the information from a chick I was dating -- an intern in the Colombian Consulate."

Lonely Planet is scrambling to review and possibly edit his work, the news wires have picked up the story, and Kohnstamm's own book, Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism, is on deck for release next week (no shameless promotion by Kohnstamm here -- I'm sure he was just dying to let the truth out and this just seemed like a perfectly good time to do it!).

Hoaxoir? You be the judge...