LONDON — It was a dark and scary night.
Sleeping bags, pillows and flashlights in tow, wizard lovers camped out Friday night at bookstores from London to Los Angeles, awaiting the bewitching hour when the latest and darkest Harry Potter adventure would be released.
Midnight would be the hour when they could finally sink their teeth into the 640-page tome--752 pages in the U.S. edition--and experience Harry's latest exploits. Then they'd be able to discover the most frightening secret of all: Which of their favorite characters dies in "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire."
"The books are e-e-xcellent. They capture you," said Edward Wong, 12, as he waited for midnight to arrive at Waterstone's bookstore in London's Piccadilly Circus. "I read late into the night, and when I wake up in the morning, I have the book in my hand."
Like most fans, Edward said he likes the magic and suspense of the stories. But author J.K. Rowling has said that one of her beloved characters will die in her fourth book. Who does Wong think it will be?
"I don't even want to think about it. It's scary," he said with a shiver.
Booksellers also were shivery--with joy at the prospect of soaring sales. The first three Harry Potter books sold a total of 35 million copies worldwide in 30 languages, and the first printing for the latest book is more than 5 million copies in Britain and the U.S.
"Goblet of Fire" already is the biggest seller in the short history of online book sales, according to Amazon.com's British Web site, with nearly 400,000 advance orders worldwide mailed Friday for delivery today. The book occupied the top spot on the bestseller lists of the company's U.S. and British Web sites.
The book's 3.8-million printing run in the U.S. may be the largest of any new release, according to Debra Williams, director of corporate communications for Barnes & Noble in New York. "We're expecting to sell over 500,000 books in the first week," Williams said of her company's stores.
The sales have been helped, of course, by tremendous hype: Fort Knox-like security surrounding the title and plot of the new book ahead of publication, including delayed foreign editions so the translators wouldn't talk; bookstore countdowns to publication date to rival Times Square on New Year's Eve; religious uproar against the "pagan tales" and televised debates about the "worthiness" of Rowling's fiction; and "I Waited for Harry" T-shirts.
