M A I N   N E W S

Harry Potter finally arrives

New Delhi, June 21
No midnight revelry and no candle-lighting to herald the release of the much-hyped Harry Potter book, yet fans all over the country crowded bookstores to grab a copy of “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix”.

The fifth in the series of the adventures of the schoolboy wizard, by British author J.K. Rowling, was today released amid big fanfare, worldwide, including in India, where like in the rest of the world it is set to break all previous records.

Going by the rush for the book on the very first day, we can expect it to cross the 1,00,000 mark in the next couple of months, said Thomas Abraham, General Manager, Marketing, Penguin Books, the publishers of the book in India.

Penguin received the highest first order for any hardback fiction book with 60,000 copies taken in by book sellers for initial sales, he said.

“I personally went on a round of the capital in the morning to check out the response to the book, and I must say it looks very good. It was slow in the morning due to the rain, but has picked up and book stores are reporting brisk sales,” said Mr Abraham.

There was no fanfare to announce the release of the book as in other parts of the world, especially in the UK and the USA, the reason, as Mr Abraham put it being that the whole idea of coinciding the release with the midsummer night was a western one.

But there were in-store events and theme-based contests and carnivals held all over the country, he said.

Die-hard fans braved the morning showers to grab their copy of the 750-page book, the longest book in the series so far, priced at a high Rs 759.

The lofty pricing though hasn’t come in as a dampener, said Praneel Arora of Bookworm in Delhi.

Of the 250 copies that we have put up for sale, we have already sold close to 30. And apart from that almost half of the 40 per cent orders placed have also been claimed, he said.

At the Teksons book store, which made a first order of 1000 copies, 150 were already bought in advance sales and on the first day of the release, close to 50 of the ‘Harry 5’ were sold.

The response has been heartening in other cities too. Mr Abraham described the demand for the book as being even better in Bangalore and Hyderabad, where he said it was a “sell-out”.

Kolkata, like Delhi, was slow to pick up in the morning because of rain, but the sales gathered momentum as the day went on, he said. PTI

Harry Potter on VCD, DVD

MUMBAI: Saregama India will release “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” in DVD and VCD format. This second part of the Potter series, the sequel to “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, will be launched on VCD in Hindi and English and on DVD only in English and will be priced at Rs 299 and Rs 699, respectively, a Saregama India press note here said. UNI