Kaklong Online Portal

admin July 22nd, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) - It is the richest
going-away party in history.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows,” the seventh and final
volume of J.K. Rowling’s all-
conquering fantasy series, sold a
mountainous 8.3 million copies in its
first 24 hours on sale in the United
States, according to Scholastic Inc.
The book’s British publisher,
Bloomsbury, expects to announce sales
figures Monday.

Earlier Sunday, Borders Group Inc.
reported that the book sold 1.2
million copies worldwide in its first
day, the biggest single-day number
ever for the superstore chain.
According to Borders, the previous
Potter, “Harry Potter and the Half-
Blood Prince,” sold 850,000 copies on
its first day of release in 2005.

No other book, not even any of the six
previous Potters, has been so desired,
so quickly. “Deathly Hallows”
averaged more than 300,000 copies in
sales per hour - more than 50,000 a
minute. It generated more than $250
million (euro181 million) of revenue,
more than triple the opening weekend
take for the latest Potter
movie, “Harry Potter and the Order of
the Phoenix,” which came out July 10.

“The excitement, anticipation, and
just plain hysteria that came over the
entire country this weekend was a bit
like the Beatles’ first visit to the
U.S.,” Scholastic president Lisa
Holton said in a statement Sunday
about U.S. sales.

“This weekend kids and adults alike
are sitting on buses, in the park, on
airplanes and in restaurants
reading ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows.’ The conversations the
readers have been waiting to have for
10 years have just begun.”

The numbers are astonishing, but not
shocking. “Deathly Hallows” was
designed to break records, released
Saturday with a first printing of 12
million in the U.S. alone, although
Scholastic spokeswoman Kyle Good
acknowledged that some stores already
were out of copies.

“Our distribution strategy was clearly
right on target in order to sell 8.3
million copies in 24 hours,” she told
The Associated Press. “We are working
with retailers to move additional
copies to the places they are needed
most in the coming days and weeks.”

Both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
announced that pre-orders exceeded 1
million. In a truly Beatles-esque
moment, seven of the top best sellers
on Amazon were Potter-related Sunday,
including the audio CD of “Deathly
Hallows” and a box set of all seven
Potters coming out in September.

“Deathly Hallows” was so popular that
Hollywood studio Warner Bros.
acknowledged it took away business
from “Harry Potter and the Order of
the Phoenix,” the fifth Potter movie,
because fans were too busy.

“They wanted to get that book
Saturday, lock themselves in the house
and read it, because they didn’t want
their other friends by Monday telling
them who made it and who didn’t,”
said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.’ head
of distribution.

Reviews for “Deathly Hallows” have
been almost universally ecstatic, and
reader enthusiasm apparently intact
despite, prerelease “spoilers” that
proliferated on the Internet.

“The book was fascinating, and I think
I’ll have to read it through at least
once more before I get the full scope
of it - but I thought it had some of
her best, most action-packed, funniest
moments in it,” says Melissa Anelli,
Webmaster for the Potter fan site
www.the-leaky-cauldron.org, who said
she finished the 759-page book
Saturday.

“When I closed the book I was
overjoyed and devastated _ overjoyed
at the story, and the way it had
played out, but devastated that the
tale was complete,” she said. “It did
feel like a bereavement, like it was
saying farewell to a long-trusted
friend.”

• Uncategorized
• Comments(1)