Harry Potter books stripped of J.K. Rowling's name are then resold by 'bookbinder artist' - 'Book artist' takes used books, removes Rowling's name — a project 'spurred by her transphobia,' [s]he claims

By Maureen Mackey | Fox News
Published January 11, 2023 4:43pm EST

A 23-year-old individual in Toronto, Canada, has been hard at work "removing" J.K. Rowling's name from used "Harry Potter" books and replacing not just the book covers with his own custom covers — but removing her name from the copyright pages and titles pages as well, according to SWNS reporting.

The individual has completed at least 30 newly "re-bound books" — offering them for sale in their newly bound form.

Artist Laur Flom, who runs a website in Canada, apparently started the project to "help out" any "Harry Potter" fans who find they have ethical issues with the author while reading her bestselling books.

Flom began the work a year ago, saying his motivation was the allegations of transphobia that were made against the British author, according to SWNS.

Rowling faced backlash a few years ago for comments that were considered by some to be controversial about the transgender community.


"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling. "Growing up when I did," said a 23-year-old "book artist" based in Toronto, "it was a given that you would read ‘Harry Potter.’" The "artist" removes Rowling's name from her books — and then resells them in newly bound form. (Dia Dipasupil)

Laur Flom told SWNS, "The project is spurred by her transphobia … I was [a fan]. Growing up when I did, it was a given that you would read ‘Harry Potter.’"

Flom added, however, that "after J.K Rowling's views on people like me came out, it left a bad taste in my mouth."


A bookbinder named Laur Flom in Toronto is shown removing pages from a J.K. Rowling "Harry Potter" book — so that Rowling's name is stripped out completely from the book, both inside and out. He then re-binds and resells the books to interested buyers. (SWNS)

He added, "It raised questions about the ethics of consuming her work."

‘Creating a safe space’​

Flom said that "the purpose of this project is to create a safe space for fans to find comfort in the books and critically engage with J.K Rowling's work."

In order to "recreate" the books, Flom — who also reportedly works as a bartender — seeks out secondhand copies of the "Harry Potter" books.

"Just the fact that people have been interested makes me think that it's been successful."​

Flom then removes the covers and the copyright pages of the books — and replaces them with his own uniquely created versions, SWNS reported.


Laur Flom lives in Toronto, Canada, and said his "the project" was "spurred" by Rowling's "transphobia," as Flom termed it. (SWNS)

Each book apparently takes around 12 hours for Flom to re-bind — not including the time it takes for him to package the books and send them off to buyers.

Flom reportedly sells each newly bound book for about $170. For a set of seven, he charges roughly $1,200.

A portion of each sale is donated to charities that serve the transgender community, according to SWNS.


Laur Flom began a project involving J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books in January 2022, SWNS reported. (SWNS)

The book work has not occurred without controversy.

Flom told SWNS, "[The reactions are] mostly good. The majority of my comments are positive — my last video reached a strange part of TikTok and reactions were mixed, but mostly good."

Flom added, "I would hope that the impact of my project is just to bring light to [Rowling's] transphobia and to make people aware of the things she has said … I get so many comments just asking what she had done."


Bookbinder Laur Flom has posted videos on TikTok about his "Harry Potter" bookbinding project. He describes himself as a "printmaker, book artist and Taylor Swift fan based in Toronto, Ontario." (SWNS)

He also said, "Just the fact that people have been interested makes me think that it's been successful."

Fox News Digital reached out to Flom for comment.

On his website, Flom describes himself as "a printmaker, book artist and Taylor Swift fan based in Toronto, Ontario."

"My practice is largely conceptual."​

He also says, "My practice is largely conceptual, exploring themes surrounding identity, memory and trans masculinity. I also occasionally rebind Harry Potter books."
He says on the site as well, "Send in your personal copies to be rebound, restored and de-Rowlinged."

Scholastic published Rowling's very first "Harry Potter" book in the U.S. in September 1998. That book was "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." (In the U.K., that book was published as "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.")

The publisher, on its website, says that more than 500 million copies of the "Harry Potter" book series have been sold worldwide to date.

More than 180 million copies have been sold in the U.S. alone, it also says.

Adds Scholastic, "If all the ‘Harry Potter’ books ever sold were placed end to end, they would go around the equator over 16 times."

Maureen Mackey is managing editor of lifestyle for Fox News Digital.

Source (Archive)

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SWNS video:

 

[Kheapathic]

Her name may be missing; but every word on the pages are of Rowling. Just like you can change your name and claim female; but every fiber of your being is male.

 

[King Possum]

This is the textbook definition of "virtue signalling"

It's a completely meaningless gesture, Rowling already got money from the book sales. All it does is show that you're fighting against the 'mean bad guy' and want internet points.

 

[McSneaks]

that could be better used into something more productive.

Literally applies to every single thing trannies do and is the reason they're in a constant fumbling state of 41%ing failures. Even if it wasn't "more" productive just "productive" in the first place would be a GIANT step towards not being useless faggots with ability to do anything...

 

[glad vlad]

Does anyone remember how some really conservative evangelical types started a company that would edit mainstream movies to remove sinful content like mild swears or women’s shoulders?

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

To everyone spouting the READ ANOTHER BOOK meme

They are. It's an artfully transformed, entirely new work that is safe™ and socially acceptable for trannies to read.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

I love how much control Harry Potter, and subsequently JK Rowling have over these freaks' lives.

Even if they hate her so much they have to try to physically scrub her name from existence, they still have to consume her works. There's living rent-free in people's heads, and then there's whatever this is.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

There's a LiveJournal post of all things that has old commentary on the idea of selling rebindings but they're talking about normal rebindings, not rebindings made to retcon the books' histories.

The points I generally agree with are

• There's nothing wrong with doing this to your personal copy for no profit
• It's acceptable to do this to someone else's copy and to take money for the book binding service, but it gets questionable if they pay for the book itself
• The best way to ensure there is no confusion between what is a service charge, what is a material charge, and what is a book markup that might actually cause issues is to have the buyer bring in their own books
  • IMO because the intent of the rebound books is to alleviate the guilt by association, it's clear that any buyers in this story would be in it for the changes to the contents, not for the craftsmanship
  • Interesting thought, if this author removal service were done by having the client provide the books, then Harry Potter isn't the only series that could get this treatment. What would be interesting to remove authors from? Maybe rebind troon books to use their legal names?
• If this happens more than once it might be like creating a new unlicensed premium/collector's edition of the book. People were concerned about isbn ramifications.
• Scale and visibility matters. Making a business and a living out of premium editions of a book are more likely to require some sort of deal than doing low profile thing for your immediate community.
  • YouTube autoplays actually showed me a relevant video recently, apparently DnD currently lets people make whatever 3rd party content they want, but that's going to change so people earning above a certain threshold now owe wizards of the coast royalties, and they're going to make that retroactive to before the agreement was changed (Wtf is that legal?)
• This exact wording of this quote just reminds me that Europeans feel very strongly about VAT, we once had a person sperging about how soda is actually cheaper than water but Muh VAT inflates it 1000+%.

reselling a used book is very different than turning that book into a value-added item and then selling it at a profit to yourself.

Now, I had a thought... Imagine you just knew for certain that at a specific college, they always use a specific textbook, and Course 101 always covers chapters 1-10 while Course 102 always covers 11-20. What would happen if you bought the textbook, rebound it into two smaller books, and sold each half separately?

What if you rebound books by the chapter for really overpopulated and poor schools, so that instead of buying a book for every student they only needed one book for every 4 students and they stagger the classes a little so each one is at a different part of the book at any given time?

Logistically it's a nightmare of course, but pretend we could do this for free with prison labor or tard labor. Would anyone expect a lawsuit to happen from this? It's not creating any new copies, but it's sure to rustle some jimmies.

Spoiler: Sneed

Calling it, its gonna be gamergate 2.0 when Josh plays the Harry Potter game.

I think he already dubbed the forum coming online as 2.0, playing has to be at least 3.0

I can't remember the last time I saw that triangle symbol on a car or a tattoo. I suspect that the type of person who gets a Harry Potter tattoo would wear clothes to cover it up in public.

I remember the last time I thought I saw that symbol, the YouTuber explained that it was actually a sobriety token.

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Entirely a tangent here but I have a vague memory of stories about how nice Harry Potter fans are. Pottermore was releasing DRM free ebooks and just asking to get pirated, the idiots! Oh but wait what? People didn't want to immediately leak it and when the leaks started appearing, they were shamed by the community?

Fast forward to today... I'm half saddened by how the one miracle of the internet has reversed, and half wondering if that was just journalists lying back before I learned what scumbags they were.

 

[Sniperwoof]

They quite literally cannot abstain from mindlessly consuming, for even a second, dear God.

This makes it even funnier that probably 90% of people who bought this claim to be Communists.

 

[Balr0g]

These people are playing by Stalin's playbook: erase the existence of unwanted people. And they are doing it to the creator no less. Fuck.These.Scum.

 

[Don't Tread on Me]

Literally erasing women in the name of feminism.

 

[The Last Stand]

These people LOVE to rewrite history.

 

[Beak Thing]

12 hours for $170...that's less than the minimum wage in Canada. He should stick with bartending.

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

I hope JK Rowling sues.

 

[Fomo Hoire]

12 hours for $170...that's less than the minimum wage in Canada. He should stick with bartending.

I won't trust the 12 hours until I see the process. I recently watched a video on how to do a perfect book binding and it had 3 glue drying phases.

If this binding is a lot of sewing, OK that takes a lot of work, maybe.

If it uses a lot of glue, I don't trust an artist to only count active time spent and to chop out the passive waiting time.

 

[OutInTheRain]

A half-assed superficial change that does nothing to change the reality of the work, and what it truly is. I think this is the peak metaphor for trans.

 

[I'mma real anime gurl]

She could have better luck turning pizza huts into local businesses.

 

[Ravana]

What a loser

 

[Beak Thing]

lol, thinking about it some more...I want to see somebody do this with Mein Kampf.

 

[Markass the Worst]

Okay, so this troon is just lazy.

All troons are lazy. As mentioned earlier they don't contribute anything of value to society. Back to the name, they always pick some retarded variation of their real name or some over the top made up fantasy name to use as their fake troon name.

 

[Pissmaster]

"Oh hey, I checked out that cool looking book on your shelf, Harry Potter and the something or another. I couldn't find the author, so I googled it. That J.K. Rowling sure sounds based, I should check out other things she's done."