Barely a week before the long-awaited publication of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest adventure in the saga of the boy wizard, 14 copies of the children's book were inadvertently sold at a single store in Canada.
Revelations of the slip-up, and the ensuing court order to prevent any leak of the book's jealously-guarded storyline, made news headlines across the world.
But for one observer, the premature sales were a mistake waiting to be reported.
"I predicted that this would happen," says Stephen Brown, Professor of Marketing Research at the University of Ulster and author of Wizard! Harry Potter's Brand Magic.
"I said some books would go accidentally on sale. How could you accidentally sell the latest Harry Potter book?"
Whatever the circumstances linked to sales, news of them has played a part in fuelling the hype surrounding the forthcoming worldwide launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
On Thursday, a nine year old boy from New York state said he had returned a copy of the book mistakenly sold to him by a pharmacist - but only after glancing at the first few pages.
Few could doubt the literary and marketing success that is the Harry Potter series - from its relatively obscure origin with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997 to the global publishing event that will be the sixth book's launch at 0001 BST on Saturday.
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