LONDON — At last! Faster than a turbo-powered broomstick, Harry Potter is flying off the shelves. Bookstores across Britain flung open their doors at a minute past midnight Saturday, London time, to admit hordes of would-be witches, warlocks and ordinary muggles — Potter-speak for non-magical humans.
All were eager to get their hands on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the latest volume of the boy wizard's adventures. Shops as far afield as Singapore and Australia put the 600-plus page book on sale at the same time.
"I'm going to read it all at once. I don't think I could stop once I got started," said Katrine Skovgaard, 18, who traveled from Denmark and waited in line for six hours before collecting her copy at a central London bookstore.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, author J.K. Rowling emerged from behind a secret panel inside the city's medieval castle to read an excerpt from the sixth chapter to a super-select group of 70 children from around the world.
Millions of Harry's fans can now solve the mysteries that Rowling teasingly hinted at for months: Will Harry's teenage friends Ron and Hermione find romance? Which major character will die? Who is the half-blood prince?
"You get a lot of answers in this book," Rowling, a resident of Edinburgh, said as she arrived at the castle and later settled into a leather easy chair before her adoring fans. "I can't wait for everyone to read it."
It has become publishing's most lucrative, frantic and joyous ritual: From suburban shopping malls to rural summer camps, fans dressed up, lined up and prepared to stay up late with their copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
In London, events were muted by the July 7 subway and bus bombings, which killed some 50 people. Book and magazine chain WH Smith scrapped a planned midnight launch at King's Cross Station, from whose fictional Platform 9 3/4 Harry catches the train to Hogwarts at the start of each term. The dealiest of the day's four attacks was on a subway near King's Cross.
Still, amid heightened security, hundreds of people lined up outside a branch of Waterstone's bookstore on busy Oxford Street, many dressed in homemade witch and wizard costumes. Some read Harry Potter books to pass the time, or played card games using Harry Potter decks.
"We're very much of the message that it's business as usual — London's open for business and we want to celebrate this book," said John Webb, children's buyer at Waterstone's, which said 300,000 people attended midnight openings at more than 100 stores across Britain.
In Australia, 17-year-old Mohammed Jalili-Baleh was first in a line of hundreds of would-be witches and warlocks at one of Sydney's largest bookstores. He and a friend spent more than 12 hours waiting on the chilly sidewalk.
"I'm an obsessed fan," he said. "They grip you. When you read one sentence, you don't want to put it down."
Elsewhere, summer camps were planning midnight wake-up calls and waiving package restrictions in anticipation of Half-Blood Prince, the penultimate of Rowling's planned seven-book series. One camp in New Hampshire even planned to forklift books to kids.
Since Rowling first introduced Harry and his fellow students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to the world in 1997, the books have become a global phenomenon, selling 270 million copies in 62 languages and inspiring a series of movies. Rowling is now the richest woman in Britain, with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1 billion.
With only brief interruptions, "Half-Blood Prince" has topped the charts of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com since last December, when Rowling announced that she had completed it. Pre-orders worldwide already are in the millions and other Potter products are selling strongly, including the audio book narrated by Jim Dale, a "deluxe" edition of Half-Blood Prince and a box set of the previous five books.
Events were planned from New York City — where Dale was to read at a Barnes & Noble in Union Square — to Mexico City, where the Libreria Gandhi book store scheduled a midnight sale and a daylong Potter festival on Saturday, even though the book will be available only in English.
Publication has sparked a price war in England, with many chains selling the book for about half the $29.95 cover price. In the United States, the online retailer Alibris.com is offering $5, plus postage, for used copies. Scholastic Inc., Rowling's U.S. publisher, has also joined the competition, offering a 20% discount on its Web site.
"I am always disappointed when publishers sell books directly to the consumer, bypassing their retail partners," said Mitchell Kaplan, president of the American Booksellers Association. "Selling it at a discount makes it more frustrating."
Scholastic is releasing more than 10 million copies. Waterstone's predicts 2 million copies will be sold in Britain, where Bloomsbury publishes the book, and 10 million worldwide in the first 24 hours.
Amazon reported that advance orders of the "adult" edition, which bears a more muted cover than the children's version, were up 17% from the last book.
The new work has been preceded by months of carefully orchestrated publicity, hype and plot leaks, and surrounded by intense security. Amazon.co.uk has a secure 200,000-square-foot warehouse to pack the books. Canadian publisher Raincoast sought a court injunction after a Vancouver store accidentally sold 14 copies last week. A judge ordered customers not to discuss the book, copy it, sell it or read it before its release.
Even the pope is part of Pottermania. Writer Gabriele Kuby (author of Harry Potter — Good or Evil?) said that Pope Benedict XVI told her in letters written in 2003, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that the books "deeply distort Christianity in the soul."
[source:USA Today]
