Potter finale under lock, key
Only a piece of white cardboard separates Mallory Schuyler from the long-awaited books.
But no matter how much it hurts, she can’t sneak a peek or even touch the cover of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” – at least, not until everyone else can at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
“I’m in the presence of the boxes,” Schuyler, Tinman Gallery’s book manager, said Thursday after 120 books were delivered to the door. “I was hugging them as I carried them downstairs.”
Giddy with excitement, she just about squealed when the deliveryman from Yellow Transportation showed up with 12 boxes wrapped in black plastic on pallets. The boxes themselves were sealed with a warning: “Do not open before July 21.”
Copies of “The Deathly Hallows” are here at various locations, but security remains tight.
Ask the average bookstore employee whether there are copies in stock, and most say they don’t have a clue.
Delivery information is top secret at most bookstores, particularly the larger chains.
Copies of “The Deathly Hallows” arrive under cloak-and-dagger-like conditions – only top managers know how many books are coming, when they’ll arrive (if they’re not already there) and where they’ll be hidden from the Muggle masses until 12:01 a.m. Saturday.
“I can’t confirm or deny that the books are here yet,” said Lesley Rabinowitz, store manager of Barnes & Noble in Spokane Valley. “They are or will be in a secured location.”
Mum also was the word at Borders Books & Music in Coeur d’Alene. “I can’t comment on that,” replied general manager Sean Thornton, when asked whether the books are already at the store. “All I can say is that they are, or will be, under lock and key.”
Scholastic, the U.S. publisher for billionaire author J.K. Rowling, has threatened booksellers and librarians with lawsuits if they release one of the first 12 million copies before 12:01 a.m.
“Scholastic is really trying to make sure this one is done right,” said Rabinowitz. “We are truly not allowed to even open a box. And no one can film the boxes prior to 9 p.m. … They have put the fear of God in us.”
Rabinowitz said Barnes & Noble in Spokane Valley will have books in the “multiple thousands” – a figure that will top the 2,000 books they had available the night “Half-Blood Prince” was released.
Only five of the roughly 40 employees who work at the store have access to the books’ location.
During Barnes & Noble’s release party tonight, boxes of books will be stacked behind the registers and secured by employees “to make sure no one grabs a box and runs out the door,” Rabinowitz said.
To be extra safe and not further aggravate eager fans, Thornton of Borders Books plans to keep the books hidden during the party and personally roll them out on carts just a few minutes before midnight.
Smaller, independently owned booksellers such as Tinman don’t have to adhere to all the same rules as Barnes & Noble or Borders, but employees there still had to sign pages of forms, agreeing not to open the boxes before the official release time. According to Schuyler, the deliveryman who dropped off the books Thursday not only had to put locks on the back of his trailer; he also had to put locks on the actual trailer so that no one would steal it off his truck.
“It’s super secretive,” Schuyler said, noting that the invoice with the delivery didn”t contain the book’s title, just the item number.
For Rabinowitz, who has worked at Barnes & Noble for 11 years, some of the security precautions make sense in light of all the hype surrounding Harry Potter.
“It’s wild,” she said. “Everyone is so excited about this book.”