The seventh and final instalment in the Harry Potter phenomenon will break all printing records for a hardback tome.
The Australian publisher Allen & Unwin never releases details of the initial print run, but it will be the biggest single printing of a book in the country’s history, and will certainly top the magical 1 million copies.
Already the US publisher, Scholastic, has announced its first print run will be 12 million, up from the 10.8 million it produced for the previous book, of which 6.9 million were sold in the first 24 hours.
Adding to the joy of the monster print run for likely printers Griffin Press and McPherson’s will be JK Rowling’s fondness for War and Peace sized novels, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows weighs in with the biggest pagination count yet at 784 pages.
The sadness will be attributed to the fact this is the final book in the series, with the monster paydays then becoming a thing of the past.
The final book will appear in the shops at one minute past midnight on July 21, and marks the conclusion of a publishing achievement that has seen its author become the richest woman in the world – she earned $200m just on the day of the last book’s release – while turning a generation of youngsters on to the joys of reading.
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