Asda says that it has this afternoon sent money to the publisher of the eagerly-awaited Harry Potter book in an attempt to settle the row which has threatened to halt delivery of its 500,000 copies.

Bloomsbury, which is due to publish the last instalment in J.K. Rowling's bestselling children's series at midnight on Friday, said earlier that it had cancelled Asda's order because the supermarket chain owed it money.

The row over the alleged unpaid bill was however being seen in some quarters as a smokescreen for a more bitter dispute over the cost of the book.

Asda yesterday accused Bloomsbury of exploiting Potter-mania to rip off children, saying that the £17.99 price tag for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was too high, and that the publisher was "attempting to hold children to ransom". Peter Pritchard, Asda's director of general merchandise, accused Bloomsbury of "blatant profiteering".

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In a statement, Asda said that the first book in the series, Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, had an RRP of £11.99 in 1997 and the sixth, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince, was published in 2005 with an RRP of £16.99.

Some commentators suggested that Bloomsbury took the extraordinary step of cancelling the supermarket's £5 million order as a way of punishing Asda for its criticisms.

Other industry analysts say that Bloomsbury was angry at the supermarket chain for its efforts to force down the price of what is likely to be the biggest-selling book of the year. Others still said that Asda's outspoken criticisms were a blatant piece of publicity-seeking for its cut-price policy.

Asda, in common with Tesco and the online bookstore Amazon, has been accepting pre-orders for the seventh Potter book for £8.87, less than half the RRP. The wholesale price of the book is £9.89, meaning that the supermarket chains are using the book as a loss leader to attract customers into their stores.

Minna Fry, Bloomsbury's marketing director, told BBC's Radio 5 Live this morning that the dispute was nothing to do with Asda’s criticisms, or with its pricing policy. She said: "It’s to do with the fact that they owe us money and haven’t settled their bills.

"It has been going on a while, going on for weeks actually, and we always said we wouldn’t provide them with the books until that was sorted out. And that’s what’s happening."

She refused to say how much Asda owed the publisher but added that they hoped to sort out the dispute today.

Claiming that money had now been sent to Bloomsbury, an Asda spokeswoman hinted this afternoon that it might be cutting the price still further, to undercut Tesco and Amazon.

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