LONDON (AFP) - Online retailer Amazon revealed Friday it was the mystery buyer of British author J.K. Rowling's first book since the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series.
"The Tales of Beedle the Bard" was sold at auction at Sotheby's Thursday to art dealers on behalf of an unidentified client for 1.95 million pounds (2.72 million euros, 3.95 million dollars), 40 times its expected price.
All proceeds from the sale of the handwritten single volume will go to Rowling's charity, Children's Voice, which helps vulnerable children across Europe.
Amazon has published editorial reviews of the book's content and photographs on its website, although it did not reveal if it would also make extracts from the book available.
"Even before establishing her charity, J.K. Rowling had done the world a rare and immeasurably valuable service, enlarging forever our concept of the way books can touch people, and in particular children, in modern times," Amazon's founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said in a statement.
Amazon has sold 12 million of the Potter books.
"The Tales" play a key role in the seventh and last Potter tome, "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows", which came out in July, featuring as the volume of five wizarding fairy tales left to Potter's friend Hermione Granger by headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
One of the tales appears in "Deathly Hallows", but the remaining four are told in "The Tales" for the first time.
There are just seven of the books, bound in brown Moroccan leather covered with a silver skull motif and jewels. Rowling gave the other six to people involved with the Potter books.
The 42-year-old author has become a billionaire, with the tales of the boy wizard translated into 64 languages.
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