What is everyone's problem? A third party encyclopedia would be superfluous and indulgent. First of all, the information is already available to everyone that would need it on the internet. Secondly, Jo should be publishing her own encyclopedia soon. And that will actually have all of the old information and a bunch of new stuff too. Thirdly, every other companion book up until this point has been editorial. That's perfectly legal. You can use someone else's information and make profit off of it so long as you use that person's info as a jumping off point to make an argument. Steve is just publishing, and making a profit off of, what he's already done. And all he's done is compile someone else's work into an online lexicon. It would be completely unnecessary for him to publish it in the first place and it's obvious that he's either doing it to make money or he's just stupid. Jo has every right to sue him and I would do it, too.

I could not of said it better myself Dulnar! Steve has all the information on his website and to publish a book (if it should even be called that) is indeed tricking people into buying something that is already found all over the interent. This situation is completely different than other unofficial guides about Harry Potter that have been published; he is gathering info from his own website, making it into a book, and selling it. I am a fan of that site and I am absolutely disgusted that someone who calls himself a fan would betray not only the fans of the site, but the author of the work as well.

For great authors, there are reference works like dictionaries of terms & themes and concordances, because so many readers including scholars are interested in these works that they need reference companion works where to check up facts quickly. And a printed book is nice to have in case the website is down just when you need it. Anyway, a lot of work goes into such projects (especially concordances) and this work deserves to be paid. This lexicon belongs in the reference category. I know it is all Rowling's material, and she & WB claim there is nothing original in Steve's contribution, but that just shows they don't understand the nature of what he has done: it is just as legitimate as an analysis of the work. Steve's work was even helpful to the author herself. If it can be convincingly argued that his lexicon would interfere with sales of the encyclopedia (and that that would interfere with money generated for charities, not for her, because that would be truly greedy, with hundreds of millions already made, to want also the couple of thousand Steve might get) then maybe she should say that his lexicon has to wait before it is published for her encyclopedia to be published, and that it can't say encyclopedia and that it has to say something else on the cover, like there is no new information, etc. (this would be ok if her encyclopedia won't take forever to appear). Suing by people who roll in millions after a while begins to make a bad impression, no matter how much we love them...

I guess if she did try to negotiate with Steve first and it didn't work out... we don't know all the details of that interaction.

How could you Jo? I thought you liked fans getting involved with your books. Maybe it's really Bloomsbury/Scholastic because HPL wants to publish stuff that JKR wanted to put in her own encyclopedia.

Jo rocks!!!! she has a right to sue whoever she wants for trying to copy her "stuff"!!! so in that case more power to her!!!! =]

weird!

MagicLantern. I disagree. Other companion reference materials of this nature, such as anything about LotR or Star Wars, came out years after the books were published. I don't think that Jo is only worried about the sales of her own, official encyclopedia, but the sales of her books as they are now. And, while she may be raking in plenty of money already, consequent printings of the books need to be taken into account, as well. Not to mention that Steve would be robbing plenty of people who have yet to read the books. Maybe Jo's own encyclopedia won't hold the ending of the series, but just backstory of certain characters and creatures and the like. Is it her right to dictate how people obtain the information of her own world? I think so. And, if a published work rubs her the wrong way because it's not how she envisioned the information to be given, it's her right to put a stop to it. And this will happen when a for-profit publication of the Lexicon is created.

..yeah...so what about 'What Will Happen In Harry Potter 7'? That made quite a bit of money as well...

"What will Happen in Harry Potter 7?" was editorial and analytical, not encyclopedic.

From this website: http://www.qforquack.com/ 2007/11/01/the-harry-pott er-lexicon/ I find Steve Vander Ark to be a total publicity stunt with his website almost being published for Harry Potter fans to read. I wouldn’t be saying this unless I had proof either, I actually thought publishing an encyclopedia would be an amazing idea too. Here’s basically what happened: One of my readers, Matthew used to be my co-webmaster when I used to make Harry Potter websites, and just last year I approached this idea to him. He thought it would be cool too and we thought we should approach Steve and Melissa (from The Leaky Cauldron) to see what they would think. Here’s that e-mail: Hello, Lexicon and Wizarding World Press, This is Matt ****** and Jessica ***** from the Harry Potter Community. We are both active members of the community, and have been with it for several years. You may know us from a past website, The Potter Prophet. A few days ago, we were chatting in AIM, and we came up with an cool idea to create and publish a Fan-Made Harry Potter Encyclopedia. We decided to attempt to affiliate with you guys, The Lexicon and The Wizarding World Press to make this possible. Being the average Harry Potter fan, we do not know much about publishing books. The Wizarding World Press would have to fill us in about any fees and requirements we need to have to publish a book. The both of us are not very wealthy, so it would be difficult for us to pay off any required fees. Thank you both for your time, Matt ****** Jessica ****** Steve took the time to reply to us (and forward his reply to Melissa aswell) telling us it would probably not be a good idea. This was due to the fact that he thought about the copyright infringement lawsuit that could occur. He also stated that many people and publishers had asked him in the past. Hello, Matt and Jessica: As the editor of the Lexicon, I get email every so often from fans asking...

I really can see why JKR is so upset about the companion book, it's really not his place to sell her characters or any information. I know that they are just a fan site, but it's the principle that you cannot make money off of someone else's idea. I personally, hate that she is suing the lexicon, because I love the site, but he shouldn't try to make a profit off of her books...

Doesn't she have enough money?

Wow, this is just sickening. This isn't the first book of it's kind to be published; I bought an unofficial guide years ago called "The Magical World of Harry Potter" and no one was sued over it. Since the publication of the 7th book, I've lost more and more respect for Jo; this book would help sell the series, but since she's planning on possibly writing the "official" one some day, she's going to be petty. Especially now that she's so successful. Shame on you, Jo. It wasn't always about the money. Is she going to sue academics next who start writing on the series? I should probably rethink wanting to do my PhD on the series next year, or ever teaching a class on it. I may get sued as well.

@ the_Bookeyrm who wrote: This isn't the first book of it's kind to be published... Yeah, it IS the the first book of its kind to be published. There has never been a website that converted all of its digitized information [which contains copyrighted materials that does not belong to the owners of the site] into book format and then sold it. It's unprecedented. Jo is not being 'petty'. She is protecting her intellectual property. If she doesn't, she loses her rights to it. This is 17 years of Jo's hard work and no one should be allowed to infringe on it. If you owned the rights to anything would you just blithely allow blatant infringement to go unchallenged and risk losing your ownership to your intellectual property? Would you really? The Lexicon, barring fan essays, does not contain 75-90% original content, thoughts, ideas, summaries---as do the 'unofficial' or 'unauthorized' books that you referred to above, do. The vast majority of The Lexicon's content is substantially derived directly from Jo's work. Re-organizing it into an easy to search format doesn't make it a 'scholarly' work.

OMG I THINK IT IS GETTING A TAD OUT OF HAND NOW ALL THIS COPY WRITE POOP LIKE THE CASTLE IT WASNT GOING TO MAKE HARRY POTTER SEEM WORSE REALL IS IS MAKING THINGS BETTER

the_Bookworm... The Magical World of Harry Potter was full of analysis and editorial. Perfectly legal. A Lexicon/Encyclopedia would be filled with the same stuff we've been reading for the past ten years. I hate that this must be explained over and over again.

This is unobjective. Other unoffical books have been published in the past, and we will see more in the future. This has never ever curtailed the sales of J.K.Rowlings works and never shall. I must point out that J.K.Rowling herself has listed the Harry Potter Lexicon as one of her top fan sites, and has stated that she has used this site rather then go and buy her own book while out onthe town and writting. It seems to me that all the Lexicon would be doing, would be making it so I don't get eye strain looking at my computer while looking up facts from the Harry Potter books. J.K.Rowling should be asured that even if I bought or was gifted the Harry Potter Lexicon book, I would be sure to buy any of her books later on down the road, as even her encyclopedias as they would be sure to give me more insider information then the Harry Potter Lexicon ever will.