Aw heck, it’s been long enough without a Harry Potter story.
US publisher Scholastic announced today that “sales of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows reached a record-breaking 11.5 million copies in the US in its first 10 days on sale. This milestone comes on the heels of the previously announced 8.3 million copies sold in the US within the first 24 hours of the book’s release at 12:01AM on 21 July.” For those looking at the trend, it means average sales for days 2-9 were about 355,000, or to put it another way, 72% of the sales in the first 10 days were on day 1. If this trend continues [the editor wrote with tongue firmly in cheek], the book should be remaindered nationwide by Tuesday.
Scholastic was printing copies of Deathly Hallows right up to release time, in order to meet the inevitable demands for restock that took place in the early hours of the sale. There are now about 14 million copies in print in the US.
For the entire series, Scholastic estimates that worldwide sales of the seven books top 350 million copies. In addition, they tell us that “there are currently 140 million copies of the seven Harry Potter books in print.” They even provided a breakdown:
Sorcerer’s Stone—29 million
Chamber of Secrets—24 million
Prisoner of Azkaban—20 million
Goblet of Fire—19 million
Order of the Phoenix—17 million
Half-Blood Prince—17 million
Deathly Hallows—14 million
To put those numbers in some snark-inspiring perspective, there is slightly more than one Harry Potter book in the US for every ten people.