That’s according to the Associated Press. Over in the UK, readers snapped up 680,000 print copies in the first three days they were available, which according to a buying director for Waterstones is the fastest-selling UK hardcover since Dan Brown’s 2009 release, The Lost Symbol. Oh, and the Guardian notes:
According to the Bookseller magazine, the sales of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child have already beaten the biggest single-week sale of any title this decade. The record was previously held by EL James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which sold 664,478 copies in a week in 2012.
This is not a particularly surprisingly development, given the popularity of the franchise—the New York Times says the initial print run by Scholastic was 4.5 million copies. Of course, the AP notes that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million copies on its first day, but we’re not even talking about a fully realized novel, here. Scholastic noted that the numbers are “unprecedented for a script book.”
Not that everybody is thrilled with what they’ve opened the covers to find! According to the New York Times:
But the book, which arrives nearly a decade after Ms. Rowling officially ended the series, has already caused a minor schism among devoted Potterheads. While many readers were ecstatic about the chance to have more material on Harry and his friends, others have faulted Ms. Rowling for licensing out her story and characters. Some fans have lashed out online, saying they feel they were duped and misled by the prominence of Ms. Rowling’s name on the cover.
“This is NOT a Harry Potter book I frankly feel disgusted even adding it to the collection,” one disappointed fan wrote on Amazon. “It reads like a poorly written fan fiction.”
Anyway, happy holidays to the staff of Scholastic.
