Last Harry Potter flies off the shelves at record-setting pace

LONDON (AFP) - The last book in the Harry Potter series flew off bookshop shelves at a record-setting clip as fans worldwide Saturday rushed to find out whether author J.K. Rowling slays or spares the boy wizard.

After months of hype and hearsay, "Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows", the seventh volume in a decade-long magical saga, went on sale globally at 2301 GMT in most countries, with London the focus of festivities.

Bookshop and supermarket chains in Britain stayed open all night to meet what they called record demand as Rowling, Potter's rags-to-riches British creator, hosted an overnight reading for hundreds of fans at a London museum.

Waterstone's bookshop, which hosted the country's main Harry Potter party at its flagship store in central London overnight, said 250,000 fans filled its shops nationwide as it sold more than 100,000 copies in the first two hours.

"There ain't nothing like that in book-selling history," spokesman Jon Howells said.

At 15 books sold every second, retailer WH Smith said sales at its 400 stores in Britain were beating the record of 13 per second held by the sixth volume in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

It gave no total figures.

Across Britain, publishers Bloomsbury said they were expecting to sell three million copies of the book in the first 24 hours on sale, while online retailer Amazon has recorded over two million pre-sales worldwide.

With 325 million copies of the first six volumes sold worldwide, and translations into 64 languages, Potter-mania was rife across the globe.

In New York, more than 100 people patiently waited in line outside a Barnes and Noble bookstore in midtown Manhattan to get a much coveted copy of the book.

Even before its stores opened their doors for the event, the Borders book chain had already sold 1.5 million copies of the last Harry Potter installment through online and telephone orders.

"The biggest day in Borders' history. We've never had a book like this," Borders USA chief executive officer George Jones told AFP.

In Asia, all-night parties and Hogwarts Express-style train trips were among hundreds of events being held over the weekend.

In Pakistan, police said Saturday they had defused a car bomb the previous night outside a packed shopping centre in Karachi where the book was scheduled to be launched.

At least 5,000 Potter buffs mobbed Waterstone's bookshop in central London, one of Europe's biggest, as the clock struck midnight local time after a countdown from a mock Professor Dumbledore, head of Harry's school Hogwarts, where the books are set.

The first fan to get hold of "Deathly Hallows", 19-year-old Amber de Jager from the Netherlands, had queued outside the shop since Wednesday despite rainy British weather and said she now planned to stay up all night reading.

"I'm shivering with excitement. We've been waiting for two years and I am going to be one of the first ones to read it legally," she told AFP.

Fans were itching to discover which of the book's characters die -- Rowling had announced the demise of two, both unnamed, while a New York Times review of the book Thursday said the figure would be six.

But the reaction from devotees in Internet chatrooms was mixed.

"8 years iv read these book, and this is how im rewarded? Alot of people will be angry with this," one, Cooper2085, wrote on the Mugglenet website.

But another on the same site, who identified herself as Princess Lauren, was much more enthusiastic.

"I'm from the UK, got it at midnight and I finished it about an hour ago," she said in a web log posted around 2:30 pm (1330 GMT).

"I sobbed about six times through the whole book and spent a good half hour sobbing after I'd finished. I loved it," she said.

An AFP correspondent who received an early copy of the 607-page book said that Harry kills evil Lord Voldemort, his nemesis, and survives to the end.

One of Harry's teachers also dies.

"I've had enough trouble for a lifetime," is the last sentence of the book, spoken by Harry.

The much-awaited worldwide release was marred for some by plot leaks, despite months of tight security to keep the story-line secret.

Angry Potter readers, eager to discover the book page by page, spilled their ire on the Internet after a US distributor and a retailer sent hundreds of copies to readers ahead of the release.

The New York Times and other newspapers published a review Thursday which gave away details, prompting a rebuke from Rowling herself, while leaks also appeared in France, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic.

Rowling, who wrote the first Potter book as a single mother receiving state benefits, has made an estimated one billion dollars (725 million euros) from the works and is now richer than Britain's Queen Elizabeth II.