Harry Potter is ready to cast a spell over the book industry this weekend, as the sixth volume in the boy-wizard series looks set to become the world’s biggest-selling novel as soon as it goes on sale.
Supermarkets such as Britain’s Asda and online retailer Amazon have joined traditional book stores in a fierce battle to attract millions of fans through their doors for the long-awaited launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Multimillionaire author JK Rowling is due to unveil the book at one minute past midnight on Saturday morning (1.01am on Friday night in South Africa) at a special ceremony in Edinburgh Castle, Scotland.
At the same time, thousands of other ”Potter parties” will transform book shops across the world into colourful scenes of jubilation as fans, many in fancy dress, scramble to get their hands on the first copies.
”The excitement in all our stores is really building up,” said Sarah Hodson, a spokesperson for WH Smith, Britain’s biggest bookseller, which is opening hundreds of outlets for a night of wizards, live owls and fancy dress.
British firm Bloomsbury will publish the book in Britain, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong and Singapore, while United States publisher Scholastic will serve about 10,8-million copies up to the US.
English-language versions of Potter’s latest adventures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will also be available in other countries on the big day, with translated manuscripts due out in a few months.
”It is going to be the biggest thing ever,” said Jon Howells, a spokesperson for Ottakars, another of Britain’s main booksellers.
”No other book really compares. People don’t queue up at midnight for any other author, and they don’t just do it in their thousands but in their tens of thousands, in their hundreds of thousands,” he said.
Ottakars has changed its name to ”Pottakars” for this week only to mark the launch, and is planning a series of ambitious parties at its stores, with 135 out of 137 of them opening for midnight.
Howells said Rowling’s series has given an unprecedented boost to the book industry, encouraging more children and adults to read and opening their eyes to a range of other, lesser-known but similar writers.
”The whole profile of children’s books has been raised since the Harry Potter thing started going. Publishers spend more money on them, they publish a lot more and they publish them better,” he said.
But with book vendors preparing for record-breaking sales from the latest instalment, a price war has erupted in Britain and elsewhere as companies compete to pull in as many Potter fans — young and old — as possible.
Supermarkets and online retailers, with their low cost and high volume business model, have been able to undercut high-street stores, offering the new book for as little as £8,96 pounds (about R105), compared with £9,99 (R117) at WH Smith, £10,99 (R129) at Ottakars and £12 (R141) at rival Blackwell’s.
In South Africa, online retailer Kalahari.net is offering the book for R189,95. Exclusive Books will charge R229 for the book, CNA is set to charge R249,95 (or R200 for pre-orders on its website) and Pick ‘n Pay is advertising a four-day special price until July 18 of R129,95.
Amazon.com has already taken 1,4-million pre-orders for the sixth chapter in Harry Potter’s life, while Asda — the Wal-Mart-owned British supermarket chain more known for bargain groceries than literature — said demand is huge.
”We are anticipating this to be our biggest-ever-selling book,” said company spokesperson Dominic Burch.
A spokesperson for Blackwell’s said, however, that the price war is dashing any hopes of making a big profit out of Potter.
”You have got the supermarkets selling at virtual cost, so [the book] … in terms of making money probably isn’t very important,” said Dawn Barnes.
She added: ”In terms of good customer relations and having events to excite and interest the kids, and the fact that it promotes children’s reading, it is very important.” — Sapa-AFP