Amazon.com has posted on their site today that they purchased JK Rowlings book Tales of Beedle the Bard at Sotheby’s auction of the book! They have pictures, are answering questions and also post this little note:

We’re incredibly excited to announce that Amazon has purchased J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard at an auction held by Sotheby’s in London. The book of five wizarding fairy tales, referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is one of only seven handmade copies in existence. The purchase price was £1,950,000, and Ms. Rowling is donating the proceeds to The Children’s Voice campaign, a charity she co-founded to help improve the lives of institutionalized children across Europe.

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is extensively illustrated and handwritten by the bard herself–all 157 pages of it. It’s bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones.

You can also see another video HERE!

Tales of the Beedle the Bard sold for £1,950,000 ($3,980,128.89) this morning at auction. The buyer was Hazlitt, Gooden & Fox. JK watched the event online and said:

I’m stunned and ecstatic. This will mean so much to the children desperately in need of help. It means Christmas has come early for me.

Time Magazine has released a list of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2007 and they have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at #8 (gasp why so low)

#8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J.K. Rowling
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
784 pages
$34.99

There’s no point in trying to finesse the importance of Harry Potter. In seven books Rowling proved that books can still be a true global mass medium, and that significant chunks of the known world can still embrace a single story. Deathly Hallows finds Rowling is in fine form, pulling all the stops she’d been saving up. She gives us wartime gloom, the crackling three-sided chemistry of Harry and Ron and Hermione, and an epic, cataclysmic finale, among many other minor treats. This isn’t the most elegant of the Potter volumes, but it feels like an ending, the final iteration of Rowling’s abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming importance of continuing to love in the face of death.

Katie Leung and Evanna Lynch have spoken to MTV about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

“We do know what happens with Luna,” Evanna Lynch said when we caught up with her at the “Golden Compass” premiere in London. “She marries Rolf Scamander, the grandson of Newt Scamander [author of ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’] and becomes a famous naturalist. I can’t do better than that.”

“I’m hoping Cho is like Luna, and happily married with kids,” Katie Leung said, “and finally over Cedric and Harry. I want her to be happy.”

TIME magazine has released 50 Top Ten lists such as books, movies, DVDs, and TV shows. Their list of the Top 10 Fiction Books has Deathly Hallows in the number eight spot:

She gives us wartime gloom, the crackling three-sided chemistry of Harry and Ron and Hermione, and an epic, cataclysmic finale, among many other minor treats. This isn’t the most elegant of the Potter volumes, but it feels like an ending, the final iteration of Rowling’s abiding thematic concern: the overwhelming importance of continuing to love in the face of death.

I will try to get the magazine soon and get a scan up. But if anyone does it before me, please send in a scan!

Thanks MN for the tip!

Thanks to Leaky, we know the release date for the UK paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! It will be published in paperback on Saturday, July 5, 2008.  Bloomsbury, the UK publishers says the paperbacks will come in both covers, the children’s edition, and the adult cover and they will be printed on 100% Ancient-Forest Friendly paper.  The retail price is set for £8.99.

Still no word on the US paperback release date. But I will let you know as soon as I find out.