"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" has shattered publishing records in the United States, selling 6.9 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale, its US publisher Scholastic said. "Once again Harry Potter made history. Early reports estimate that Scholastic broke all publishing records," a Scholastic statement said Sunday.
"The fact that a brilliantly written book for children just sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours in the US is cause for celebration, not just for Scholastic but for book lovers everywhere," said Lisa Holton, president of Scholastic Children's Book Publishing.
A second printing of the sixth volume in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is already hitting US bookstores, the firm said.
Scholastic had printed an unprecedented 10.8 million copies the first time around, but pre-release sales were so brisk it rushed a second run, the company said.
The last book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," sold more than five million copies on its first day in June 2003.
More than 5,000 bookstores across the United States stayed open and fans queued for hours Friday to snap up the latest account of the young wizard's adventures, which went on sale at the stroke of midnight.
While more than one million avid readers contented themselves with the promise from online retailers like Amazon.com of next day delivery, tens of thousands opted for the instant gratification of midnight purchases.
The countdown to the long-awaited release was led by a clock on a giant screen in Times Square, New York City's traditional gathering place for momentous events like the first moon landing.
This year's launch hype was matched only by the extraordinary security measures taken to prevent any copies of the book leaking out before the official release date and hour.
Scholastic required the managers of all the US stores and libraries with which it deals to sign affidavits pledging to keep the copies under wraps and in a secure room.
The release of the new Harry Potter book broke all online sales records at Amazon, with more than 1.5 million copies snapped up in a matter of hours, the company said Saturday.
Barnes and Noble, the number one US book retailer, sold a record 1.3 million copies in 48 hours, on its internet site and in retail stores.
"In the first hour, Barnes and Noble bookstores sold 378,000 copies or 105 copies per second," the bookseller said gleefully in a statement Sunday.
First-day sales of the "Half-Blood Prince" outpaced first-day sales of Rowling's previous Potter instalment by 40 percent, Barnes and Noble said.
Borders, another major US book retailer, also reported record first-day global sales of 850,000 volumes.
More than a half million fans attended Harry Potter-themed parties at its 1,200 stores worldwide, a Borders statement said. A Borders store in Singapore remained open 39 consecutive hours, the company said.
Major bookstores staged the festivities in a bid to woo buyers away from discounters, online purveyors and even drugstores, which are now selling the book, the Wall Street Journal noted Monday.
With a cover price of 29.99 dollars, the book generated about 140 million dollars in US sales revenue over the weekend, even with price wars underway, the journal said.
Barnes and Noble is selling the book at a discount price of 17.99, while Amazon.com has gone even lower, to 16.99, it said.
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