Cyrillic Harry Potter/ASOUE rip-off
Oct 15, 2018 6:05:28 GMT -5
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Post by Violent BUN Fortuna on Oct 15, 2018 6:05:28 GMT -5
This is something I stumbled upon the other day which took me by surprise: someone on Instagram was selling off a load of Harry Potter books in various languages, including a copy of Prisoner of Azkaban in Serbian Cyrillic. The weird thing is, whoever published this version has quite obviously totally ripped off the cover design from the American editions of ASOUE. They seem to just stick Mary Grandpré's Harry Potter cover illustrations inside the arched window on the front, and then just use all the design elements of ASOUE. I've never seen quite such a blatant rip-off (aside from some unlicensed Disney merchandise I once saw, where Princess Anna's hair had been turned black).
I looked these copies up -- there aren't many pictures of them, but I thought they might be of interest. They do have a different design on the back, but that may very well have been ripped off from some other book series, who knows?
All these images are from an expired Ebay listing: www.ebay.com/itm/Serbian-Translation-Cyrillic-Alphabet-Hardcover-Harry-Potter-Set-JK-Rowling-/273430004530?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137
EDIT: With a little more digging, I found this direct comparison someone had made:
(Source: gramha.com/media/1681232738827769373 )
And also this quote from a Wikipedia talk page about Harry Potter in translation: 'I collected 8 books published in cyrillic by Politika. The first 6 in the collection were numbered 1-6 but the Order of the Phoenix was split into two "books" thence the discrepency with the numbers with volume II of OotP being "book VI" in the collection. The 7th & 8th books in this Politika series were the first four books of a Series of Unfortunate Events.' (Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHarry_Potter_in_translation#Serbian_Cyrillic )
I don't know quite what they mean about the 7th and 8th books being 'the first four books' of ASOUE -- did the publishers just directly take the text of ASOUE as well as the cover design? -- but whatever the case, I found it quite interesting.
I looked these copies up -- there aren't many pictures of them, but I thought they might be of interest. They do have a different design on the back, but that may very well have been ripped off from some other book series, who knows?
All these images are from an expired Ebay listing: www.ebay.com/itm/Serbian-Translation-Cyrillic-Alphabet-Hardcover-Harry-Potter-Set-JK-Rowling-/273430004530?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137
EDIT: With a little more digging, I found this direct comparison someone had made:
(Source: gramha.com/media/1681232738827769373 )
And also this quote from a Wikipedia talk page about Harry Potter in translation: 'I collected 8 books published in cyrillic by Politika. The first 6 in the collection were numbered 1-6 but the Order of the Phoenix was split into two "books" thence the discrepency with the numbers with volume II of OotP being "book VI" in the collection. The 7th & 8th books in this Politika series were the first four books of a Series of Unfortunate Events.' (Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AHarry_Potter_in_translation#Serbian_Cyrillic )
I don't know quite what they mean about the 7th and 8th books being 'the first four books' of ASOUE -- did the publishers just directly take the text of ASOUE as well as the cover design? -- but whatever the case, I found it quite interesting.
