‘Harry’ Will Be ‘Prince’ of Paperbacks, Podcasts
Scholastic Press is betting there’s at least a few million readers out there who didn’t bring home the magic of J.K. Rowling’s famous boy wizard last summer.
The paperback version of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the sixth installment of the series, hit book shelves on Tuesday, almost exactly a year after it caused mass-media attention with its midnight release last July. Scholastic, the U.S. publisher of the series, said an initial run of two million copies of the book went on sale on the paperback’s first day of release.
This time around, the marketing of the 672-pager will involve Scholastic presenting five episodes of a Web podcast featuring the input of a panel of three Potter aficionados. Cheryl Klein, who oversees the copy editing process of the series, Melissa Anelli, who runs the Leaky Cauldron fan site online and Emerson Spartz of MuggleNet.com, who created the popular all-things-Potter Web site, will join forces with the publisher to talk about how this most recent book fits into the series.
The panel was scheduled to travel around the country to conduct live discussions for the podcasts at several Barnes & Nobel stores this week. The last stop of the “Harry Tour” is set for Sunday afternoon at the Barnes & Nobel at the Grove in Los Angeles.
More than 13 million copies of the hardcover version of the “Prince” are in print. Rowling is currently writing the seventh and final edition to the series, but the release date of the book has not been announced.
- Companies:
- Scholastic Inc.
- Places:
- Los Angeles
- U.S.