Pre-orders for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” exceed half a million

One month before the release of the sixth volume in
J.K. Rowling’s hugely successful
Harry Potter series, online retailer Amazon.com said that advance orders had topped the half-million mark.

A total of 568,000 copies of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” have been ordered online and at US syndicated store sites, such as Borders.com, Amazon said in a statement.

The online retailer has posted a “Harry Potter Meter” on its website which updates the number of advance orders every hour.
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