'The Tales of Beedle the Bard' Rowling book sells for $3.98 million

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The famous Harry Potter author, JK Rowling, expected the "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" book to sell for up to $100,000 at the Sotheby’s auction. But she got more than she bargained for, as a it sold for a record amount of $3.98 million, nearly 40 times more than what she thought.

According to Sotheby’s, the bidding lasted about 10 minutes and as many as five bidders at the auction room, and bidders via the phone, participated in this auction. The book was sold to a London dealer named Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox.

No other modern literary manuscript has been sold for anywhere near this amount. It is also an auction record for JK Rowling’s work and for a children’s book.

The proceeds from this auction will go to “The Children’s Voice” a charity JK Rowling started in 2005 to help poor, vulnerable children across Europe.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard” book name appeared in the last Harry Potter book, when the teacher Albus Dumbledore leaves this book for Hermione. There are five stories in the handwritten book, and one of the stories, “The Tale of the Three Brothers” appears in the final Potter book “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.

Rowling wrote the following about this book in the auction catalog: ”’The Tales of Beedle the Bard’ is really a distillation of the themes found in the Harry Potter books, and writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I loved and lived in for 17 years,”

There are only seven copies of this book, one of which was sold in the Sotheby’s auction and six others that are with the people closely connected to the Harry Potter books.

There is no mention in the news about when this book will be available for the general public. No doubt it will be another best-seller for Rowling, and I hope she doesn’t keep fans waiting for a long time.