Harry Potter’s Magical Touch

The worldwide frenzy over the fifth Harry Potter movie and the seventh and final Harry Potter book is only the latest chapter in the greatest success story in the history of publishing. How did a teenage wizard conquer the world?

How many Potter books have been sold?

A mind-boggling number. In fact, only the Holy Bible and The Quotations of Chairman Mao have more copies in print. The first six books in the series have sold 325 million copies worldwide. The seventh and purportedly final installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. on July 21, will probably add more than 50 million to that total. The series' international popularity has made a billionaire of its once-penniless British author, 41-year-old Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who's worth more than the Queen of England. The series has been translated into 66 languages, including Mandarin (in which our hero's name is rendered as Ha-li Po-te), Lithuanian (Haris Poteris), and Arabic (Hari Butar). The sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours after its release in 2005'”more than The Da Vinci Code sold in an entire year.

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