"Hocus Pocus, We Got Harry," boasted the New York Daily News headline over an account of how it acquired a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix before today's midnight embargo.
Now the author and publishers of the fifth Harry Potter book are out to get the Daily News for giving readers a glimpse of its secrets, and have slapped a $100 million damages claim against the tabloid.
The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, alleges that the Daily News infringed author JK Rowling's intellectual copyright and harmed the $3 million worldwide marketing campaign of the US publisher, Scholastic Incorporated.
The copy the newspaper obtained was one of four sent by a wholesaler to a Brooklyn health food store. The owner displayed them in his window on Monday. He said he was unaware of the embargo.
A customer bought a copy and provided it to the Daily News which published a legible reproduction of two pages on Wednesday, but did not reveal the ending.
Packages of the books have been shipped to stores across north America with instructions the contents should not be put on sale until midnight tonight.
Scholastic said it hoped the Daily News pre-publication "will not spoil the surprise for millions of children around the country who have been eagerly awaiting the book".
The Daily News was unrepentant. "We will vigorously defend any action and are confident we did nothing wrong journalistically or legally," said spokesman Mr Ken Frydman.
A Wal-Mart Store in St Constant, Quebec, inadvertently put copies of the book on sale nine days ago. A woman identified as Melissa told the Montreal Gazette she bought a copy there on June 12th and would finish reading it rather than return it to the Canadian publisher, Raincoast Books.
Book and toy stores in the US plan to open at 11 p.m. and stage late-night parties for young buyers of the 768-page Harry Potter book which goes on sale at 12:01 a.m.
Extra staff have been drafted into the Scholastic Store in downtown Manhattan in anticipation that it will sell 2,000 copies shortly after opening.
Some stores are planning pyjama parties with live owls and magicians. Special festivities are planned for 1,300 Wal-Mart stores across the country.
Scholastic expects to double the record-breaking sales of the last Harry Potter book in the US, and is printing 8.5 million hardcover copies of Order of the Phoenix. The initial printing of the previous volume, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, was 3.8 million.