Amazon.co.uk reaches 250,000 pre-orders landmark with Wallingford in Oxfordshire ordering most copies per capita in the UK

May 8, 2007, London: Amazon.co.uk today announced that Wallingford in Oxfordshire is the ‘Harry-est’ town in the UK with the highest average number of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ pre-orders per person, anywhere in the country. The announcement coincides with Amazon.co.uk pre-orders reaching 250,000 and the global Amazon number of pre-orders hitting 1 million.

Wallingford ranked top of the ‘Harry-est’ places in the UK chart, which matches pre-orders on Amazon.co.uk to the most recent UK census data to find the town with the highest number of sales on a per capita basis. The top 100 will be updated on a weekly basis and can be viewed at www.amazon.co.uk/harrypotter

The current top ten towns are as follows:

1. Wallingford, Oxfordshire 2. Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire 3. Faringdon, Oxfordshire 4. Marlborough, Wiltshire 5. Okehampton, Devon 6. Carnforth, Lancashire 7. Wigton, Cumbria 8. Ashbourne, Derbyshire 9. Cheadle, Greater Manchester 10. Kingsbridge, Devon

‘The postman in Wallingford is certainly going to be busy on the morning of Saturday 21st July,’ said Christopher North, Head of Books at Amazon.co.uk. ‘The high demand for ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ that we are seeing in the Oxfordshire town epitomises the excitement and buzz around this seventh and final installment of the series.’

‘Nobody wants to miss out on this book and that is illustrated by the high rate of pre-order sales,’ continued Christopher North. ‘Where as previously people would have circled a date in their calendar, now they simply pre-order and look forward to delivery to their door on the day of the release.’*

With 74 days until the release of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’, the seventh installment of the spell-binding series looks set to break Amazon sales records in the UK and around the world.

‘The sales of ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ in the UK and across the globe are eclipsing those of the previous Harry Potter books by a considerable margin,’ said Christopher North. ‘Although the children’s version remains the bestseller, we have seen a strong uplift in sales of the adult version compared to previous years, perhaps illustrating that people who have grown up reading Harry Potter are taking their love of the series of books into adulthood.’

Amazon.co.uk has also launched a ‘Muggle Counter’ on site, which provides up-to-the-minute worldwide pre-order sales data for ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ taken from Amazon sites across the globe (UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and China).

‘I am sure that people will watch the Muggle Counter with interest to see if the record 1.5 million global advance orders on Amazon achieved by Harry Potter 6 can be broken by this seventh and final installment,’ commented Christopher North.

Amazon.co.uk is currently selling ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ for just £8.99 at a saving of 50% from RRP.

Key Facts on ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ * The sixth book -‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ - reached one million global sales on Amazon on 12th June 2005 - 174 days after the announcement of the publication date. The seventh book ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ has reached one million global sales on Amazon just 95 days after the announcement of the publication date. * Harry Potter became available for pre-order on Amazon.co.uk on 22nd December 2006 following a surge in demand on the back of the announcement of the title of the book by JK Rowling. * The publication date (Saturday 21st July 2007) was announced on 1st February 2007 – two days later, Amazon.co.uk had reached pre-order sales of 100,000 * At its peak, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ has been outselling the rest of the top 20 best selling books on Amazon.co.uk combined by a ratio of 5 to 1 * The children and adult versions of this seventh book have occupied the number one and number two spots on the Amazon.co.uk books bestseller charts since they were became available for pre-order with just one exception – when ‘The Children of Hurin’ by JRR Tolkien briefly held the number one spot in March 2007.

A potted history of Harry Potter * ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ dominated Amazon.co.uk’s bestsellers list for the majority of the 2003 * Two years later, ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ headed the bestsellers throughout 2005 * Both titles went to number one on the Amazon.co.uk Hot 100 within hours of their release and went on to amass pre-order sales in excess of 400,000 copies in the UK alone * Amazon.co.uk has delivered millions of Harry Potter books to customers across the UK and to over 150 countries worldwide including Barbados, Nepal, Fiji and Tanzania to name a few * Amazon received over 1 million pre-orders at its websites worldwide for both ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’ and ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince’ * Globally, Amazon received more than 1.5 million advance orders of the sixth book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” which was released in July 2005 and was Amazon’s biggest ever new product release.

There is more in store at our Harry Potter shop * Amazon.co.uk’s dedicated Harry Potter shop – www.amazon.co.uk/harrypotter - is the place to go for all the latest Harry Potter information and merchandise. In addition to pre-ordering “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, visitors to the shop can browse Harry Potter-related products from across Amazon.co.uk

For further information please contact the Amazon.co.uk press office on 020 8636 9280.

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