I was flabbergasted. Can you imagine, this happening on the verge of it coming out? And to think that I didn't see it important to pre-book. Oh Damn. I've to go to Carrefour, very very early tomorrow. Any way, here's The Star report:
Potter party goes on despite boycott (2nd update)
PETALING JAYA: The MPH Megastore at 1 Utama continued with its "Sorcerer’s Ball" party for Harry Potter fans at 6.30pm, despite having joined forces with three other bookstore chains refusing to sell the seventh final instalment in J.K. Rowling's bestselling series.
MPH, Popular, Harris and Times at a press conference in Kuala Lumpur at 4pm announced that they would not sell Harry Porter and the Deathly Hallows in protest against selected hypermarkets selling the book at a hefty discount.
The recommended retail price of RM109.90 is being violated by hypermarkets advertising and selling it at RM69.90, they said.
The four chains, with a total of 100 outlets nationwide, said they were protesting the indiscriminate discount and wanted to show customers that they were not "blatantly profiteering" from them.
However, they said they would honour all pre-orders.
"This means the book will no longer be available for sale at these stores nationwide from tomorrow (Saturday) following the worldwide release," MPH Bookstores chief operating officer Patricia Chen said.
"All events related to Harry Potter will be cancelled," she said earlier.
When asked if the move was to pressure sole distributor Penguin Books to remove the book from the hypermarkets, she said that it was not fair to allow hypermarkets to sell such a popular book when they were not in the book business.
On whether they had contacted Penguin, Chen said that Penguin had responded by saying that it was not aware of the hypermarket pricing.
Penguin also said that it could only set the recommended price and it was up to the retailers to market it at their choice of price.
Harry Porter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale nationwide -- well, except for these four bookstore chains -- from 7.01am tomorrow.
