Thomas Sailer

Thomas Sailer (* August 4th 1987, Eisenstadt, Austria) is an author and well known figure in the Harry Potter fandom. He is the former representative of EmmaWatsonEmpire, which was the biggest Emma Watson fan community in the german speaking area and one of the hugest Emma Watson fansites in the world. Further, it used to be a vivid virtual meeting point for Harry Potter fans.

In 2007 he founded The Knightbus, a Harry Potter link directory that connected about 1.000 Harry Potter websites from all over the world.

The same year, he founded the DA: A website union, aiming to get Harry Potter fan communities to collaborate more and thus give online fanbases a true voice in the Harry Potter universe.

During that time, the Slovenian fan site Harry Potter Slovenija turned to Thomas as the fans from their country were very concerned about the translation of the final Harry Potter book: EPTA, the publisher which obtained the rights to sell the Harry Potter novels in Slovenia, fired Jakob Kenda who has translated the books so far and was popular among the fans. Instead they hired Branko Gradišnik, who delivered a horrible translation of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Now the Slovenian fans were very concerned about the translation of the final Harry Potter book. Thomas and his network helped them to spread their message and the case got attention: Harry Potter websites from all over the world reported about it and caused a stir within the fandom. It turned out successful: Epta lost the publishing rights to Mladinska Knjiga, which hired Jakob Kenda again, who did not only translate Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to the fans' delight, but made a new Slovenian version of HBP also.

By that time Thomas owned a Mercedes Benz 280 SEL, which he painted all purple and called the 'Knight Cruiser' - VIP transport for witches and wizards. The car served as the mascot for both of his web projects, the Knightbus and the DA.

Meanwhile Thomas has withdrawn from all his active parts in the fandom, as he wanted to put his further focus in his own book projects instead. However, being an author, he decided to put all his valuable experiences down in an autobiography called 'Chronicles of a Harry Potter Fan' (CoaHPF) which was released in the end of 2012. Originally published in German, the book soon became translated to English in spring of 2013.