/ 22 December 2004

Harry Potter orders hit the roof

The latest instalment in the Harry Potter series won’t hit stores for more than six months but it has already topped at least one bookseller’s most wanted list and is racking up thousands of advance orders, retailers said on Wednesday.

Less than 24 hours after publishers announced a July 16 release date for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince — British author JK Rowling’s sixth novel set in the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — it had shot to number one on online bookseller Amazon.co.uk‘s Hot 100 book list.

The list, calculated from all orders placed by customers on the retailer’s internet site, put the latest chapter in the boy wizard fantasy series ahead of bestsellers such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

Amazon could not say exactly how many pre-orders it had received, but the company said its website had been deluged after it began taking orders for the novel late on Tuesday.

”The fact that the book has already hit number one in our Hot 100 books chart shows how incredibly excited customers are about the sixth Harry Potter,” Amazon.co.uk managing director Robin Terrell said.

Amazon said it took 420 000 pre-orders for the fifth in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, released in the summer of 2003, making it the largest pre-order item to date. The company is expecting a similar response to the latest instalment.

Jo Marino, a spokesperson for Waterstones bookstore chain, said customers had started calling its stores to place orders for the book immediately after publishers announced the release date on Tuesday.

”There is so much demand, people want to make sure they get their copy,” Marino said.

She predicted plenty of readers will also wait until books hit the stores at 12.01am on July 16 to join in-store parties and pick up their copies in person.

”Without a doubt, I think we will be seeing queues around the block like we have for the previous books,” she said. ”People want to come down and be part of it.”

She said when the previous Potter book went on sale, Waterstones’ central London store started selling it just after midnight and had sold 2 000 copies within two hours.

”We think we will have the same sort of response,” Marino said.

Publishers have said the new book takes up the story of Harry Potter’s sixth year at Hogwarts when the powers of the villain Voldemort and his followers are increasing day by day.

A seventh and final novel will follow at a date yet to be announced. — Sapa-AP