Record Breaking Sales
What a surprise, no? IT was written that in the first 24 hours, 6.9 million copies were sold. Averaging better than 250,000 sales per hour, more than the vast majority of books sell in a lifetime.
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.Even allowing for deep discounts on the $29.99 release, "Half-Blood Prince" still easily generated more than $100 million in revenue. It's not only the richest opening in publishing history, but tops the combined estimated take for the weekend's top two movies, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "The Wedding Crashers.""When a book beats out movies, we're in great shape," Holton said.