Canada can't cope with Potter

Where's a magic wand when you need one?

The head of an Altona-based printer has learned he will not be handling the next Harry Potter book, since the novel's print run has become too big for Canadian companies to deal with.

"Harry Potter has outgrown us," said Curwin Friesen, president and chief operating officer of Friesens Corporation, which has printed the last five books in the series.

BEST-SELLERS

"It's unfortunate, because we've enjoyed growing with Harry Potter.

"We were publishing them when they weren't very popular, and now they're international best-sellers."

Friesens has printed all or part of the last five books in the Harry Potter series, which charts the progress of the titular teenage wizard as he hones his skills and powers at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But printing of the sixth in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be handled by a single American company, after Potter's U.K.-based publishers decided to consolidate printing in the U.S.

In Canada, a best-selling children's book typically involves a run of about 10,000 copies, Friesen said.

In the case of the new Potter book, more than one million books have already been ordered -- an amount that would overburden a shop of his size and force him to turn away too much other business.

"They'll probably have to dedicate an entire plant (to the run) for between seven to nine weeks," said Friesen, who still has every intention of reading the upcoming addition to the series. "A small printer just can't dedicate their entire facility to that."

The Harry Potter series is the stuff of legend in the publishing world, with five million copies of the fifth book sold in the first 24 hours of release alone.

As the popularity of the series has increased, each book has grown longer and longer, with the most recent -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- coming in at 870 pages.

British author J.K. Rowling has said there will be seven novels in the series.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is slated for release on July 16.