t3h weekend report.
With no spoilers from the latest Potter book.
Went to Redmond Town Center’s Borders last night for the chaos that was being caused by Harry Potter. I remember being impressed with the turn out for the release of Halo 2 back in 2004 – that couldn’t compare to the crowd lined up last night. When they were handing out bracelets during the day, they had six colors with 150 people per color. I was in the first 450, but when I drove through the parking lot at 11:35, people were everywhere and no color in sight… plus all of the people that were there to hang out with people in line and the people just showed up to see if they could get an unreserved copy.
I instead left there and went to QFC, like I did for the release of #6. Got there at 11:55 and got in line – was out the door with two books in hand at 12:17. Two? I had gotten an email from someone I work with was waiting in line and I knew he had the same color band as I did. Considering the amount of time it would take to complete 300-450 sales, I knew he’d still be in line – probably would have been until 1am at least. So I zipped back to RTC, where I found the line to be just as long as when I left. I dropped off the extra copy; while I was walking back to the car, I bumped into someone else from XNA: he went from no band to blue band – since I didn’t bother to put on my bracelet – which pushed him up in line by about 400 people.
Did I stay up last night to read the book a second time in one week? Nope. I plan to read it slower this time through. True, it was nice to finally have a hard copy of the book, but even so… I didn’t want to stay up all that late: I knew I had a testing session for Halo 3 over at Bungie and I wanted to be conscious for that.
Over all, I’d say it’s been a good weekend. *g*
Harry Potter is for kids… :P
So are Trix. Truth is that since Book 4 I’d argue that. I’d put 4-6 for middle school, 7 for high school.
In fact, from CNN:
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling’s all-conquering fantasy series, sold a mountainous 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours on sale in the United States, according to Scholastic Inc.
Worldwide sales amounted to 72.1 million copies, according to provisional figures from Nielsen BookScan. The book sold 2.6 million copies in Britain in its first 24 hours.
No other book, not even any of the six previous Potters, has been so desired, so quickly. “Deathly Hallows” averaged more than 300,000 copies in sales per hour — more than 5,000 a minute — in the United States. The $34.99 book, even allowing for discounts, generated far more revenue than the opening weekend of the latest Potter movie, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” which came out July 10.