Bloomsbury: Facts and Figures

Mar 30, 2005

Posted by: SueTLC

Uncategorized

Two bits of news tonight relating to Bloomsbury, the UK publishers of the Harry Potter books. First, on the Harry Potter section of Bloomsbury.com, some fun and interesting facts and figures about the Potter books have now been posted.

If all Harry Potter books ever sold were placed end to end, they would go around the equator 1.4 times.

If all the Harry Potter books ever sold were laid flat, they would cover the area of about 1000 football pitches. Or they could be used to carpet Monaco 3.7 times.

On its first day of sale in the UK, Harry Potter and the Order of The Phoenix sold at a rate of 21 books per second. If all those books sold in the UK in the first day were stacked up the pile would be 12 times higher than Mount Everest.

If one person were to read every Harry Potter book ever sold – at a rate of one per day – it would take them over 700,000 years to do so.
The total number of Harry Potter books ever sold is more than the populations of Britain, France, Germany and Italy combined.

(Note: all dimensions are based on the Bloomsbury editions and sales figures are based on worldwide sales of the series except where stated)

Second, Bloomsbury also announced that the pre-orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were “substantially higher” than forecast, and as a result, their profits for 2005 were due to be higher than first thought. At the end of the trading day, Bloomsbury shares had gone up by 6%. Thanks to Pete and Rachael for the BBC link.





The Leaky Cauldron is not associated with J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., or any of the individuals or companies associated with producing and publishing Harry Potter books and films.