J.K. Rowling tickets oversold due to website malfunction

J.K. Rowling’s tour promoting her new book, The Casual Vacancy, has only one stop in the United States. The publishing company arranged for 1,000 seats at one venue. Unfortunately, the tickets went on sale too early due to a “security breach,” and now there are too many ticket-holders with far too many seats. Credit goes to The Mary Sue for the information.

Little, Brown and Company, the publisher putting out the new book, arranged for the event to take place in the Jazz at Lincoln Center theater on October 16th. Rowling is set to be interviewed on stage by author Ann Patchett, answer a few audience questions, and sign copies of The Casual Vacancy for everyone with a ticket.

And therein lies the problem.

Tickets for the event were publicized as going on sale 10 a.m. on September 10th but went on sale 12 hours early, at 10 p.m., on Lincoln Center’s website only. They quickly sold out but the message didn’t get to the box office. Sales took place in person the following morning before the glitch was realized. Hypable reports some fans were also able to purchase tickets online again that afternoon.

According to Hypable, the Jazz at Lincoln Center website previously posted this message:

Due to technical difficulties on the ticketing website, tickets for the J. K. Rowling event on 10/16/12 were made available prematurely at 10 pm on September 9th. Tickets then went on sale at the previously announced time of 10 am on September 10th. Jazz at Lincoln Center is in the process of investigating how this occurred and what arrangements may be made to honor each ticket purchased, and will provide an update as quickly as possible. Neither JK Rowling nor Little Brown and Company are responsible for this situation. Jazz at Lincoln Center apologizes for any inconvenience.

But as of 11 a.m. Tuesday morning it reads:

Due to a security breach, tickets for the J. K. Rowling event on 10/16/12 were made available prematurely at 10 pm on September 9th. Tickets then went on sale at the previously announced time of 10 am on September 10th. Jazz at Lincoln Center is in the process of investigating how this occurred and what arrangements may be made to honor each ticket purchased, and will provide an update as quickly as possible. Neither JK Rowling nor Little Brown and Company are responsible for this situation. Jazz at Lincoln Center apologizes for any inconvenience.

Yikes. I don’t even want to imagine that this actually happened but could a Rowling fan have made the early sale happen to insure they got a ticket? A “security breach” could mean many things of course, it could be completely unrelated to the Rowling event, but it’s a bad thing for fans either way.

A master hacker Potterhead sounds a little far-fetched to me, but anything is possible! What are your theories?