Amazon buys The Tales of Beedle the Bard

As some of you may have heard, the seventh copy of J.K. Rowling’s book within a book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, sold yesterday for a pretty sizable sum: just shy of $4 million. About forty times what Sotheby’s initially projected. And now, this morning, news of the buyer’s identity is spreading quickly: Amazon.com. What that means exactly — “corporate ownership”? — isn’t completely clear to me. Does it actually belong to Jeff Bezos? Can he just flip through it any time he likes? Anyway, that’s beside the point.

Hop on over to Amazon’s Beedle the Bard page for some sumptuous new photos, a short video, and a review of the first tale, “The Wizard and the Hopping Pot” (with spoilers). Reviews of the others tales will follow, so you may want to bookmark the page. I’m not sure who exactly is writing this content, but in his or her own words:

There is no easy way to define the experience of seeing, holding, or reading J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard, so let’s just start with one word: “Whoa.” The very fact of its existence (an artifact pulled straight out of a novel) is magical [...]

The reaction is a bit “Keanu” — but probably accurate. :)