No turning away buyers this time, booksellers hope

07:43 PM MST on Saturday, July 16, 2005

By Jeff Commings / ARIZONA DAILY STAR

At this very moment, wizard Harry Potter is working his magic on the imaginations of children and adults around the world.

J.K. Rowling's 672-page "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" became available for sale in bookstores at 12:01 a.m. today.

If you didn't reserve a copy of this sixth book in the series, your luck might be better this weekend than it would have been in 2003, when the last installment sold out in about a day.

"We're kind of confident, and probably foolishly so, that we're going to be able to meet our customers' needs this weekend," said Michael Fenlason, operations manager at Borders Books and Music, 5870 E. Broadway.

Many large chains and smaller stores apparently learned their lesson after turning away frustrated customers looking for copies of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" about 24 hours after the book became available.

For those hoping to borrow the book, the library waiting list doesn't look promising. On Friday, 740 people were in the queue to read one of the 300 copies distributed to Pima County libraries. So anyone whose name is added to the list today won't be able to check out the book for at least six weeks.

If you hustle to the nearest library this morning, though, you have a chance at one of 147 copies that can be checked out for seven days instead of the usual three weeks.

Amazon.com has sold at least 1.4 million advance copies of the novel worldwide, compared with 1.3 million for the previous book in 2003. Other online companies are reporting record advance sales, with many of them waging price wars.

In the United States, Scholastic Inc. is printing a record 10.8 million books in anticipation of record sales that will surpass the last book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

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