'HBP' breaks sales records
July 18, 2005 at 12:14 AM ET
Geri
HPANA (via Forbes.com)
harry potter and the half-blood prince, half-blood prince, book 6, scholastic
The sixth book in the series sold an average of 250,000 books per hour. President of Scholastic Children's Books, Lisa Holton commented
"This is a cause for celebration, not just for Scholastic, but for book lovers everywhere."
Sales for the sixth installment of J.K. Rowling's fantasy series easily outpaced those for Potter V, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which came out in 2003 and sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours. Acknowledging that some stores quickly ran out of books two years ago, Scholastic has already increased the print run for Half-Blood Prince from 10.8 million copies to 13.5 million.
The Scholastic numbers are for the United States only. Sales figures from Britain are expected Monday.
On another note the book:
- ...generated more revenue last weekend, at least $100 million, than the nation's top two movies, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Wedding Crashers.