If Ever a Wiz There Was

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, the most anticipated new book since Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, was finally completed at the end of December and will be out on bookshelves at midnight on July 16th, 2005. My BF and I were fortunate enough to attend the OoP release party at a local bookstore two years ago where, as a reward for reading all of the books 17 times, we received a Wizard's hat, a #20 spot in line for the midnight rush, and a trivia ass-beating by a couple of 13 year old girls.

Needless to say, we are gearing up for the April 7th marketing launch which will carry us through the spring months. I will try to avoid posting or linking to spoilers, but we will be carefully following any new items of interest in the coming months.

For more news, great articles, and basically anything to satisfy your HP cravings, check out the divine wisdom at The Leaky Cauldron:

If all Harry Potter books ever sold were placed end to end, they would go around the equator 1.4 times.

On its first day of sale in the UK, Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix sold at a rate of 21 books per second. If all those books sold in the UK in the first day were stacked up the pile would be 12 times higher than Mount Everest.

The total number of Harry Potter books ever sold is more than the populations of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince will have the largest first print run in the history of publishing: 10.8 million books in the US alone. This breaks the record set by the previous Harry Potter book in 2003. For comparison, first print runs of my employer's titles are usually in the thousands. As in two thousand.

We'll also be keeping an eye out for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie news. The film will be released November 18th, 2005.