Hint: If there's a triceratops on your version of Harry Potter, it's probably fake...

Even though I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, I'm still amazed by the huge fan base this series has amassed that seems to rival those of Star Wars or Trekkies. And with such a fanatical interest in this franchise, it's no surprise that a huge collection of amateur fan fiction exists out there. It's also no surprise that a bunch of bootleg copies of the Harry Potter books would exist. The crazy thing, though, is how China, a country where counterfeiters have raised the bar of stealing intellectual and artistic property to a whole new level, has even managed to rip-off these amateur writers in order to make a quick buck. In an article from The New York Times:

The iterations of Potter fraud and imitation here are, in fact, so copious they must be peeled back layer by layer.

There are the books, like the phony seventh novel, that masquerade as works written by Ms. Rowling. There are the copies of the genuine items, in both English and Chinese, scanned, reprinted, bound and sold for a fraction of the authorized texts.

As in some other countries, there are the unauthorized translations of real Harry Potter books, as well as books published under the imprint of major Chinese publishing houses, about which the publishers themselves say they have no knowledge. And there are the novels by budding Chinese writers hoping to piggyback on the success of the series — sometimes only to have their fake Potters copied by underground publishers who, naturally, pay them no royalties.

No one can say with any certainty what the full tally is, but there are easily a dozen unauthorized Harry Potter titles on the market here already, and that is counting only bound versions that are sold on street corners and can even be found in school libraries. Still more versions exist online.

These include “Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince,” a creation whose name in Chinese closely resembles the title of the genuine sixth book by Ms. Rowling, as well as pure inventions that include “Harry Potter and the Hiking Dragon,” “Harry Potter and the Chinese Empire,” “Harry Potter and the Young Heroes,” “Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon,” and “Harry Potter and the Big Funnel.”

Considering the Chinese stereotypically have this problem with order and waiting in lines, I guess it's no surprise that they would make up these fake versions to appease the masses. Consider this father from the NYT article:

One such writer is a manager at a Shanghai textile factory named Li Jingsheng. “I bought Harry Potter 1 through 6 for my son a couple of years ago, and when he finished reading them, he kept asking me to tell him what happens next,” he explained. “We couldn’t wait, so I began making up my own story and in May last year, I typed it up on my computer. I had to get up early and go to bed late to write this novel, usually spending one hour, from 6 to 7 in the morning and 10 to 11 in the evening to write it.”

The result was “Harry Potter and the Showdown,” a 250,000-word novel, the final version of which he placed recently on Web sites, followed by a notice saying he was looking for publishers. The book quickly logged 150,000 readers on a popular Chinese site, Baidu.com’s Harry Potter fan Web page.

I think that was a pretty cool thing he did for his son, but hopefully, he told his kid that this wasn't the real seventh and final book. Imagine if he never knew of the existence of the final book, and went around in life thinking his dad's version was the real deal.

Anywho, just so I'm not ripping off anyone else myself, you can find the picture I used above along with some other scanned photos of bootlegged Harry Potter books in Asia from Mutant Frog Travelogue.