"Generally, books with noticeable defects, like the one in Gaulin’s copy, don’t interest collectors, says Stypeck. On Abebooks.com, an eBay-like site that deals exclusively with new and used books, titles with minor printing errors are often priced higher than those with more glaring ones. A copy of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, for example, with upside-down lettering merely on its spine, is priced at $4,000. A copy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, which is bound and printed entirely upside-down, is listed at $1,500.

Of course, as Stypeck points out, the “rules” of the antiquarian book world do not necessarily apply to Harry Potter. “When it comes to Harry Potter, there’s this high energy and extreme interest, indicating a very voracious market.”

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