[pp.int.general] Fwd: [Fanac] Harry Potter's Popularity Holds Up inEarly Sales

[Andrew Norton]

I went with my wife to a midnight launch of it in Atlanta (she's a big fan) along with our kids. some 400 copies sold at that one store within 35 minutes of launch there. Had to say there was one apparant common theme - the majority of the book purchasers didn't seem to be big readers in general. It was either kids, reading it because it's popular, adults who were constantly saying they couldn't believe they were doing this because they don't usually read, or, like me, parents there because of their kids. People just weren't looking at other books, and despite the extra savings that night, not many people bought other books (I got a German phrase book - if you've ever seen my attempts in the German or Austrian IRC channels, you'll understand why!)

Now, someone was just talking about the Simpsons movie in another IRC channel, about how Fox are claiming the czech republic's reputation is damaged because of the movie being cammed there - http://torrentfreak.com/fox-threatens-measures-after-the-simpsons-movie-leak/

Andrew Norton
US Pirate Party
(K`Tetch)

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:51:46 +0200, "Amelia Andersdotter" <teirdes at gmail.com> wrote:
> Notice the 3rd paragraph in particular. "numerous leaks ... failed to dent"
> 
> As a bookworm I can honestly say that it's never crossed my mind to
> read any lengthier text even in the most eye-friendly format online.
> 
> I'm only bringing it up because it's so strange that *they* would
> bring it up, seeing as it's so obvious that no book-lover would read
> bad photo-copies, and no non-booklover would ever read it anyway.
> 
> //amelia
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Daniel Atterbom <daniel at hundens.se>
> Date: 28-Jul-2007 11:49
> Subject: [Fanac] Harry Potter's Popularity Holds Up in Early Sales
> To: Fanac <fanac at lists.lysator.liu.se>
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/23/books/23potter.html?8bu&emc=bu
> 
> July 23, 2007
> 
> Harry Potter's Popularity Holds Up in Early Sales
> By MOTOKO RICH
> 
> 
> In its first 24 hours on sale, "Harry Potter and the Deathly
> Hallows," the seventh and final installment in the wildly popular
> series by J. K. Rowling that officially went on sale at 12:01 a.m.
> Saturday, sold 8.3 million copies in the United States, according to
> Scholastic Inc., the publisher.
> 
> That exceeded the 6.9 million copies that "Harry Potter and the
> Half-Blood Prince," the sixth in the series, sold in its first 24
> hours on sale two years ago.
> 
> The figures seemed to show that numerous leaks before the official
> release, including photos of every page of the book that circulated
> on Internet file-sharing services last week, had failed to dent the
> enormous pent-up demand for the book.
> 
> On Friday night, booksellers and fans threw parties to herald the
> book's release, and at many outlets in New York and elsewhere, lines
> stretched around the block with shoppers waiting to be among the
> first to buy the book shortly after midnight.
> 
>   "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.," Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic's
> trade and book fairs division, said in a statement.
> 
> The Arthur A. Levine imprint at Scholastic printed 12 million copies
> of "Deathly Hallows." That brings the number of "Harry Potter" books
> in print in the United States to 133.5 million.
> 
> Before the publication of "Deathly Hallows," the six other books in
> the series had sold about 325 million copies worldwide. The series is
> published by Bloomsbury in Britain.
> 
> Many of the books were sold at a substantial discount. Barnes &
> Noble, for example, was selling "Deathly Hallows" at 40 percent off
> the $34.99 cover price, or $20.99. Amazon.com was selling it for
> $17.99. The estimate of first-day sales indicates that at an average
> selling price of about $20, Americans spent $166 million for the book
> in one day. Many booksellers will make only slim profits on the
> book's sales.
> 
>   Separately, the Borders Group announced that it had sold about 1.2
> million copies of the book globally in its more than 1,200 Borders
> and Waldenbooks stores on Saturday. Most of those stores held
> midnight parties, and Borders estimated that about 800,000 people
> attended them worldwide. The sales figure exceeded the 850,000 copies
> of "Half-Blood Prince" that Borders sold on the first day of its
> sales two years ago.
> 
> 
> 
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