The Biggest Day in Publishing History

Posted on July 20, 2007

It's being called the biggest day in publishing history. When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows goes on sale tomorrow, fans all over the world will dive into the last adventure of Harry, Ron and Hermione. The Times (U.K.) discusses the phenomenon and how it will affect people's behavior this weekend.

Children throughout the country will be going to bed early tonight after sacrificing a whole night�s sleep to discover whether Harry Potter lives or dies.
Thunder and lightning failed to deter people from standing in line outside book shops yesterday for the biggest event in publishing history. Readers who were allowed to get their first glimpse of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallowswere presented with a dilemma familiar from their last midnight vigil: whether to plough through the book from the beginning or skip straight to the epilogue.
J. K. Rowling was expected personally to give 1,700 people their first taste of the book as she read extracts of the final Harry Potter book at a moonlight signing at the Natural History Museum. Queues stretched for hundreds of metres outside Waterstones in Piccadilly, Central London, as fans awaited the witching hour - one minute past midnight - when they would be able to take their first look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
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A study by the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, showed that the number of children aged 7-15 attending casualty wards fell from an average of 67 to 37 when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published on July 16, 2005
The ChildLine charity estimates that call volumes will triple over the weekend as hundreds ring in grief for characters killed in the book
Cinema managers predict that attendances at family orientated films will drop by 20 per cent as children stay at home with Potter

We've been avoiding spoilers all week -- it's been exhausting. We can't wait to see how it all ends. But we admit that we're terrified that Harry is about to join his parents, Cedric Digory and Sirius Black.