The Boy Wizard Returns

NEW YORK - Times Square Friday night was host to a crowd of about 1,500 would-be wizards, or at least fans, of the publishing phenomenon Harry Potter book series.

The polite and quiet crowd divided into two lines, one on Broadway in front of the Toys-R-Us store where the book went on sale at the bewitching hour of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the other line snaked around the corner and down 45th Street.

Some came dressed in wizard capes and tall pointy hats- most sported the trademark Harry Potter lightning-bolt scar on their foreheads (false tattoos courtesy of Toys-R-Us) but all were on line for their hot-off-the-press copy of the latest edition in the series, the sixth of seven, of books by author J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince.

The book buyers, mostly adults, were largely local fans, like Greg Packer of Long Island, 41, who admitted he had not yet read all the previous editions. Others, like Susan Davidson- a more devoted enthusiast- have read the previous books a total of 32 times. Davidson, 18, had traveled with her family from Dallas specifically for the event.
Davidson summed up in one word what she liked about Harry Potter books: “Imagination.”

“When I read the books I can visualize everything clearly, the way Hogwart’s would look, all the details,” said Davidson, referring to the school where Potter trains to be a wizard in the novels.

Perhaps the most anticipated edition in publishing history, the hour the book became available was synchronized around the globe to insure the well-maintained shroud of secrecy that has become trademark to Harry Potter book releases, and to allow readers everywhere to crack open the book at the same time.

In this latest effort to keep a lid on the contents of the book, after much speculation that some main characters might meet with their end, a few leaks did occur. Fourteen books were accidentally sold at a grocery near Vancouver, Canada. The Canadian distributor of the books, Raincoast Books Ltd. won an injunction against the purchasers, barring them from revealing the plot.

In upstate New York, a-nine-year-old boy also purchased a copy after a store accidentally put it on the shelf too early. The boy agreed to return it after reading only a few pages.

The US publisher of Harry Potter, Scholastic Books, printed an initial unprecedented 10.8 million copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, an all-time United States publishing record. The fastest-selling book in history, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling's fifth Harry Potter book, was released on June 21, 2003 and sold 5 million copies in the first 24 hours.

Rowling, who has single-handedly transformed the publishing business, has sold over 103 million books in the United States, and each title has been #1 on The New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal, bestseller lists. With a string of successful books, feature films, and the rights and royalties from toy sales, Rowling was reported in 2004 to have a net worth of over one billion dollars. Rowling has been Britain's bestselling fiction author over the past eight years by a margin of more than 10 million books.

Rowling first conceived of her main character in 1990. “He just strolled into my head fully formed,” Rowling has said. The first book, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone, after initially being rejected by several publishing houses, was published in 1998, and has inspired an increase of children’s book titles by tenfold. The crossover readership of the Potter books, enjoyed by both children and adults, has further opened the eyes of book publishers to new publishing possibilities.