Today is Harry Potter author JK Rowling‘s birthday and in celebration it has been announced that her previously unavailable handwritten tome of short fairytales (written by Rowling after she penned the 7th and final Harry Potter book) will be published for sale to regular folk like us. The original handwritten copies of the book were given away to personal friends of Rowling and the 7th was sold at auction for almost $4 million bucks to Amazon.com … and now, the book will be published in a special edition version (for $100) and a standard paperback edition (for $8) — the Collector’s Edition will be sold exclusively on Amazon.com:

Wizard news, Harry Potter fans: A book of fairy tales written and illustrated by J.K. Rowling is to be published for charity. A British charity said Thursday it hopes to raise $8 million through sales of “The Tales of Beedle the Bard.” Rowling co-founded The Children’s High Level Group charity, which supports institutionalized children. She has signed over her royalties. The book is a collection of five wizarding tales referred to in Rowling’s Potter saga. It was initially produced in an edition of seven handwritten copies. Six were given away by Rowling as gifts, and one was bought by retailer Amazon at an auction in December for almost $4 million. Rowling said the new edition would include her illustrations and introduction, the stories themselves and commentaries ostensibly by Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of the fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, “which appear by generous permission of the Hogwarts Headmasters’ Archive.” The book will be published Dec. 4 by Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the United States. Amazon also plans a leather-bound collectors’ edition priced at $100 … She has described “The Tales of Beedle the Bard” as a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, calling it her goodbye to a world she lived in for 17 years.

Hot damn! This is great news! I was hoping that Tales of Beedle the Bard would be published one day despite the fact that we were told that the book would never be published (henceforth making the sole auctioned copy of the book so valuable). It makes sense that Amazon will be the exclusive seller of the Collector’s Edition since they ponied up the $4 million bucks for the auctioned copy of the book. I already placed my pre-order for both the Collector’s Edition (which you can pre-order HERE) and the standard edition (which you can pre-order HERE). This is absolutely amazing news for Potter fans. It may be JK‘s birthday but I feel like we all have cause to celebrate today :)

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