Send an owl with the correct fee (see below) with a note attached requesting a 3, 6 or 12 month subscription.

No. You must prove you are a wizard! Owls only take mental instructions from wizards. You can buy an owl in Diagon Alley or use a Post Owl.

Note for Muggle-borns: please do not attach any strap, band or other identifying object to your owl, apart from the letter. This is not just a security precaution against Muggle interference. Cruelty to and banding of animals are crimes under wizarding law, and if you have placed a collar on your cat or a leg band on your owl, the Ministry of Magic has the right to confiscate.

Subscriptions can be taken out for three months, six months or a year. The costs are 3 Galleons for 3 months, 6 Galleons for 6 months and 12 Galleons for an annual subscription. Note delivery costs are excluded and must be paid to the owl direct (5 Knuts per delivery).

The Daily Prophet is not sold on the wizard street, except for the odd newsagent in small half wizarding villages like Godric's Hollow (and in Diagon Alley of course) so there is no difference in the price of the newspaper between the street version and the home delivered version. The Daily Prophet's street sales are a miniscule proportion (<5%) of the total.

A 12 Galleon annual payment is £240 or $320 in Muggle money, taking the old exchange rates of 1 Galleon = 20 pounds (the Gold cap is now nearer to 22 pounds).

This sounds pricey but remember it is only a fraction of what Muggles pay for the Telegraph on the street (£3 per copy x 365 = £1,095 cost per annum). In comparison an annual subscription to the Telegraph is £150 or $199. But Muggle papers rely upon more lucrative newsagent sales.

The delivery charge of 5 Knuts is to the owl, not to the Daily Prophet. You have to understand that using an owl means that a newspaper must keep a lot of owls or use the Post Office. Every day the Prophet sends out ~5,000 copies to its subscribers. Each owl delivers a paper and then returns to the Post Office for another delivery. Typically each owl delivers 2 papers each hour and works five hours in the morning from 5 am to 10 am. Ten deliveries per owl max, so a total of 500 owls are needed. That's a lot of owls!

Their upkeep, food and care are important, and the 5 Knuts per delivery covers all that and the owl's treats for the day.

Assuredly. And the owls like doing the delivery. Each owl earns (10 x 5 Knuts per day = 50 Knuts = ) 1 Sickle and 21 Knuts, out of which the Post Office takes a 20% profit (10 Knuts per owl per day) and the rest is spent on the owls' housing and treats. As you can see the Post Office makes a mint out of this (10 Knuts x 500 owls = 5,000 Knuts per day = ) 3,700 Galleons (£74,000) per year.

The owls earn 30 Galleons each per year, and are looked after like kings in the Post Office. Each owl has a multiple-room compartment and a constant supply of treats and beetles to supplement its hunting. This arrangement means the owls can have their own mates there and bring up families. So, some owls nest together, and one hunts while the other delivers the morning letters. This reduces stress on the owls, should hunting go badly.

It also means there are really more than 500 owls used for the Daily Prophet deliveries, but no one knows exactly how many! Oh, and owls can leave anytime to set up a new home in a nearby wood if they feel the Post Office is crowded, so there is the occasional crisis in deliveries!

Owls demand payment, house-elves don't. It is as simple as that (also, wizarding law forbids greater than 20% profit take on paid magical creature related jobs).

No, 'fraid not. Yer gonna have to keep a lot o' knuts handy each day and provide the right amount to the owl. Advance payments can't be made because the owls expect the exact number of coins. If you were to pay your annual fee to the owl (5 knuts x 365 days = 1,825 knuts = 63 Sickles = ) 3 Galleons 12 Sickles in one go, the owl will take the payment but will treat it as a gift, and not return for the rest of the year! Rest assured, you won't see any more newspapers after that first one!

Surprisingly, yes. It turns over a good profit. A 12 Galleon annual subscription by 5,000 witches and wizards (out of a total population of around 20,000) is an amazing coverage (25%). It is by far the biggest wizarding newspaper in Britain and Ireland, though obviously it is dwarfed by Die Post Wizardum (The Wizarding Post), which has 400,000 subscribers! (Its owner, Helmut Schugglenesser is one of the richest wizards in Germany).

But the Daily Prophet doesn't do too badly. It earns 12 Galleons x 5000 = 60,000 Galleons each year or £1.2 million. Not counting money from advertising, which is the bulk of its earnings.

The Prophet has a punchy and at times sensationalist style, which doesn't always go down too well in Germany and some other European countries. It also publishes more investigative reports and leads than Die Post Wizardum, whereas the witches and wizards in France and Germany like less controversy and more social gossip.

Nevertheless, the Prophet's hard-hitting reports on international conferences are read by a lot of wizards abroad, and the paper earns thousands of Galleons from sales around conference times. Of course where it falls down badly is sport. It has little Pro Quidditch coverage (just daily English league reports and a weekly international roundup by Caiman Wickitts) because the professional Quidditch tour does not include Britain and Ireland, which only have amateur leagues.

If you want news about the Quidditch stars, post-match interviews, who is going out with whom etc, you'd best read a European wizarding newspaper. La Republicca Quiddissa in Italy is a daily broadsheet dedicated entirely to Quidditch news and gossip! And Tout Le Quidditch is a French wizarding paper in a similar vein.