Harry
Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has, as expected, broken all
known and independently validated UK book sales records for
first day sales with an incredible 2,009,574 copies sold through
UK bookshops, supermarkets, internet sites, and newspapers on
its first day of release — Saturday 16 July 2005. This
figure includes consumer sales from non-panel members, such
as book clubs. Further sales will have been made to libraries,
schools and institutions.

Fans of the Harry Potter series have been waiting since June
2003 to find out what happens next and it appears from the first
day sales that two years has never seemed so long!

In July 2003, sales of the hardback editions of Harry Potter
and the Order of the Phoenix broke all records with 1,777,541
units in its first day’s sales through the UK Total Consumer
Market (TCM) and also included 1st day sales from non-panel
members, such as book clubs.

Nielsen BookScan oversees the book trade Gold & Platinum
awards, for which a Gold is awarded at 0.5 million copies and
a Platinum at 1 million copies sold. Richard Knight, Managing
Director of Nielsen BookScan said “Typically a good book
will take about four to six months to go Gold and very few books
reach Platinum in their first year of publication. Harry Potter
and the Half-Blood Prince achieved Platinum in less than one
day!”

Sales of all Harry Potter titles monitored by Nielsen BookScan
in the UK now total over 19 million copies and worldwide in
excess of 52 million!

For more details visit the Bloomsbloomsbury
web site.

Visit the WCN Harry Potter
information pages and message board.