TAMPA, FLA. -- Booksellers knew "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" was going to be huge, but the fictional character's magical powers became fully apparent last month as the fifth installment of the series gave new meaning to the retail axiom, "flying off the shelves."

The book went on sale at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 21, and within 24 hours 5 million copies had been sold. Not even the book's publisher, Scholastic Corp., anticipated such demand. It thought the record-setting initial print run of 6.8 million copies would suffice, but as advance orders started coming in and excitement over the book's release grew, Scholastic decided to print another 1.7 million copies. The publisher's demand forecast proved conservative, though, after first-day sales figures were tallied. Barnes & Noble sold 896,000 copies and set a single day sales record. The Borders Group set a record with 900,000 copies sold at its stores over the weekend. And Amazon.com set a record with roughly 1.3 million advance orders placed on its Web sites worldwide. Three days after the book went on sale, Scholastic decided it had better print more books and went back on press a third time to print another 800,000 copies, boosting the total print run to 9.3 million.

To understand how so many copies of a book could be sold so quickly, one only had to visit a bookstore the Friday evening before "Order of the Phoenix" went on sale. The parking lot of the Barnes & Noble store on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa was already full at 10 p.m. Friday night, forcing customers to park behind the store or in the parking lot of an adjacent cafeteria that closed an hour earlier. Inside the store, kids and adults alike were sprawled everywhere on the floor, and the cafe area was standing-room only. Close to 100 people gathered in the rear of the store for a trivia contest, while a television reporter from the local Fox affiliate did several broadcasts at the front of the store with dozens of howling kids adorned with various Potterphernalia as a backdrop for the live shots.

Around 11:30 p.m., employees cleared the center aisle of the store to make room for flat carts that were used to bring cases of the books from the rear of the store. Minutes later, as books were wheeled through the gauntlet of customers, they cheered the book's arrival.

To ensure an orderly checkout process, Barnes & Noble gave customers numbers, and shortly before midnight, called out a range of numbers to let that grouping of customers know they were the first in line. With the customers in line and unopened boxes of books behind the checkout area, customers and employees counted down to midnight, at which time boxes were torn open and customers again cheered as cashiers held copies of the book aloft. As the first grouping of customers moved through the line, a second range of numbers was called, and more customers got in line.

It was a surreal scene in the sense that a book, not the appearance of a pop star or professional athlete, was the source of such anticipation and had prompted millions of people to bring their kids to stores across the country at an hour well past bedtime.

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COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group