Poor Steve. I think his publishers are just being ridiculous with no negotiations. I don't think that's what Steve wanted, but the publishers are being unreasonable.

It's a shame, but it had to happen, in my opinion.

Shannon

I'm getting lost in all this.

The idea of any kind of fan encyclopaedia i think is great. But not if it goes against copyright laws or J.K.R's trust to get it published. They are her books and it is her world. We're lucky she shares it with us atall.

Guys, no matter how much we love what Ms. Rowling has done with her books and how much we enjoy her writing you have to remember she probably wouldnt be doing this if she wasnt making money. She is a human trying to protect her assests and make them grow, nothing more.

they need to sort this out before it get's even further out of hand.

It's already been stated that Jo wishes all profits from such ventures to go to charity.

It is an interest debacle. On the one hand, the Lexicon is a great source of information and would be great in paper form. But on the other, JK has stated the possibility of making an encyclopedia of her own. So, who knows...

what???? I don't understand anymore

I am sort of understanding this a bit and it is kind of an interesting thing. I hope we get Jo's soon.

er.....ok. HP lexicon is a really good site...they should be allowed to make it a book.

Wow..I haven't been on here in a while, then I come back and see this. Kind of a shame really. The Lexicon is great, but Jo, being the infinite source of info in herself when it come to the world of HP, should be able to have first dibs on publishing a hard copy encyclopedia if that's what she wants to do. She worked too long and hard. The people from the Lexicon should honor that.

I think it'll be a hard case for Rowling to win-- tons of supplementary tomes and compendiums to literary works exist for *other* book series, so why not Harry Potter? It's not like they are trying to amend or append to the series. She's just upset because she was planning on writing the same book and they got there first.

Honestly -- at the risk of being flamed -- I'm a little disappointed in Rowling lately... She came from humble beginnings but now that she's the richest woman breathing, she seems to have forgotten what being 'the little guy' is like, between this suit and the Beadle the Bard book which she is distributing only to a select few... in both cases she has gone from trying to write books for the masses and promoting literature to trying to make literature *less* accessible to the masses, be it through limiting publications or trying to stop others from publishing. I don't understand why she's doing that, but it makes me sad.

I'm confused.

ok wow.

ummm....i love the web site...but a book wow!

I think it'd be different if they weren't trying to capitalise on material that is and has been available on the internet for free.

i heard that j.k. rowling and company were planning to make their own harry potter encyclopedia, so that was one of the many reasons she didn't want the lexicon published. you know what would be cool, though, is if in whatever encyclopedia comes out, it included a fanon section, you know, where it talks about the different ships, and facts, and such...

That shouldn't make a difference... there's a precedent as other books and compendiums/encyclopaedias have been published on many literary works (not to mention Cliff's Notes on basically every literary work)... The fact that information is distributed through another channel such as the Internet shouldn't stop John Doe on the street from compiling that information and presenting it as a text of information, and certainly the fact that the author of the source material doesn't want them to publish should not be a strong enough argument to prevent them from publishing. They should be allowed to distribute this guide as an unauthorized guide to her world, and then if she wants to publish an official one, let her -- and then we'll let the public vote with their dollars.

Thing is, it doesn't say "authorised" at the moment.