What We Can Learn from Harry Potter Publishing Mistakes

A friend of mine up in Ft. Worth called tonight and asked if I’d bought the latest Harry Potter book yet. He had just picked up his, and thumbed through it, when he noticed that pages 114-179 were missing. He asked me if I’d heard about this. Nothing turned up in a quick Google query. The bookstore manager was pulling every copy to see how widespread the problem was … My friend quickly bought me a copy, too. Now I’m the proud owner of a “faulty” copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

I read an interesting article over at GamePolitics recently entitled Gaming’s 10 Biggest Scandals of All-time. Some I had forgotten about, such as Night Trap, which set off much hand-wringing 15 years ago due to its titillating content. Some were more recent such as Rockstar’s Hot Coffee fiasco.

It’s interesting from a cultural standpoint when video games “go bad,” or when there are errors such as the Hot Coffee code left in the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas game. When there are problems or difficulties in other media, like books, such hand-wringing is seldom seen.

After he got off the phone with me, my friend started calling the local media. One of the news stations in Dallas knew about it. Apparently a Wal-Mart in Wichita Falls found a couple hundred bad copies and quickly pulled them from the shelves. The newspapers he talked to hadn’t heard anything yet … but the night staff said they’d get on it.

Now where’s the hand-wringing? Where’s the outrage? Probably won’t see it if this gets considered newsworthy. Books can have errors in printing, but serious errors in gaming code are usually caught beforehand. And those that aren’t can be quickly patched.