Someone in a position to know (whose name we obviously can't reveal) has given us word that Scholastic is planning for a mid-June 2005 release for book six, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. More specifically, they are considering June 11th and June 18th - both Saturdays.

As always, treat this as a rumor until we can get real confirmation, which in this case will most likely come from JK Rowling's official site.

My two cents: This timeframe is a little earlier than I expected, but, call it wishful thinking, it still seems pretty logical. Consider: a June 2005 release would be 2 years after book 5 - ample time to finish a story that is supposed to be significantly less than OOTP (many estimates have it at half the length). She wrote GOF in 1 year, if you remember, under different circumstances. It took JKR 3 years to write the monster that is OOTP and that was with extremely long breaks from writing. Jo does have a baby due this spring, but she has said repeatedly that it will not delay the book's release.

At the Edinburgh Book Festival last August (3 1/2 months ago) she said she was more than half-way done.

I guess all we can do at this point is speculate and hope, but I'm optimistic.