Usually, they sell books. Today, they purchased a very special one.

Amazon.com has purchased the copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard that was auctioned off at Sotheby's in London today. The purchase price was £1,950,000, almost $4M. The money will be donated to a charity J.K. Rowling co-founded, The Children's Voice campaign.


For those who don't know, The Tales of Beedle the Bard was, up until now, a fictitious book created by Rowling in the last installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling decided to create, literally, that book: she  handwrote and illustrated seven copies of it. Six were given to people close to her.

Amazon has a page  with photos, devoted to their new book. It's bound in brown leather and decorated with silver ornaments and moonstones. The paper is creamy and Rowling chose to use blue ink.

In addition, amazon has posted a short review of one of the Tales in the book. I hope at some point we'll see the whole story, as well as the others in the book, along with the reviews.

There is also a short video on the site, a reading of the note that Rowling wrote for the future owner of the book.

I would have bid on this beautiful book, had I had $4M laying around. Alas...

Amazon's page