Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman: the Extensive Surveillance Operation Guarding the Biggest Book Launch Since Harry Potter

As Harper Lee’s much-awaited sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird is finally launched we can reveal the extensive security operation to keep its contents under wraps until the secretive global rollout.

Measures taken to keep the launch of Go Set a Watchman – which comes 50 years after it was actually written – secretive until the last minute included shrink-wrapped boxes and storage areas monitored by CCTV cameras.

The scale of the exercise can be gauged from the fact that stores and libraries in about 70 countries would be unpacking and displaying the books at the last possible minute.

The publisher, HarperCollins, was perhaps mindful of the theft in June of a manuscript of Grey, the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, in advance of the much anticipated launch. Or indeed the leaking online of key plot points from J K Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007.

“We’ve got our best security operations on this book,” Mary Amicucci, vice president of adult trade and children’s books for Barnes & Noble, told the Wall St Journal. “It’s very similar to the size and scope of ‘Harry Potter.’ ”

Both American and British English editions of the book are being released simultaneously along with Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Korean translations on 14 July.

Go Set a Watchman is Amazon’s most pre-ordered print book since the 2007 release of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

The book was Harper Lee’s first attempt at writing a novel, a manuscript of which was submitted by Lee to a publisher in 1957. After being told the manuscript needed more work Lee returned with To Kill a Mockingbird, which became one of the most iconic novels of the 20th century.

Now 89 years old Lee hasn’t published a book since came out in 1960 – until now.

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