A first edition of the debut Harry Potter book was sold at auction in London overnight for nearly 20,000 pounds ($45,000), more than twice the expected price.

JK Rowling, whose Harry Potter series made her the first billionaire author, says she is surprised at the fuss surrounding her announcement that the boy wizard's head teacher, Albus Dumbledore, was gay.

Harry Potter might have waved his wand and cast a spell, but author JK Rowling sat down and cheerfully signed 1,600 books for schoolkids on Monday as she launched her first US book tour in seven years.

Five of Moscow's leading bookstores will begin selling the Russian translation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final book in the Harry Potter series, at midnight, on October 13.

Author JK Rowling and her French publisher say they are worried about organised groups of translators, not individuals, after a boy was arrested in France for posting a translation of the last Harry Potter book online.

French police briefly detained a 16-year-old boy who posted an unauthorized translation of the latest Harry Potter book online, a prosecutor said Wednesday.

The final Harry Potter book is still being translated into Chinese, but eager mainland Chinese fans have posted their own translations online, a move that could lead to counterfeit books in a country where piracy is rampant.

Just because J.K. Rowling has stopped writing about Harry Potter and his friends and foes doesn't mean she's stopped thinking about them. She told the series' fans what she thinks happened to many of the book's characters after the final installment.

JK Rowling says she was devastated after finishing the seventh volume of her Harry Potter series - and many fans of the epic tale of teenage wizardry are sharing her sense of loss as they realise that an era has also ended for them.

Harry Potter might possess the powers to vanquish evil wizards - but not Chinese pirates. Bootleg English-language copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, JK Rowling's latest and last novel in her super selling series, have been appearing on the streets of Beijing - testimony to local pirates' ability to churn out copies of any in-demand entertainment in the blink of an eye.

Less than a week after the release of the final Harry Potter book, author J.K. Rowling is giving hints about its conclusion. Before publication, Rowling pleaded for secrecy about the ending of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows." But in an interview broadcast Thursday on NBC's "Today" show and in one published Thursday in USA Today, she discussed Harry's fate.

British author JK Rowling says that she will miss being able to retreat into the fictional world of Harry Potter after finishing the seventh and final volume on the teenage wizard.