The rehearsal script for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the eighth Harry Potter story that is currently playing on West End, has sold more than 2 million copies in the first 48 hours of its release—and that’s just in North America.
Cursed Child became available to purchase on July 31 at midnight, which happened to fall on Harry’s birthday, as fans around the world celebrated at midnight release parties and waited in line to get their own copy. Scholastic released the number of books it’s sold thus far. It’s unprecedented for a script book, which had a first printing of 4.5 million copies.
“Eager fans of all ages gathered at midnight parties in bookstores and libraries to get their copies of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, bringing communities together to celebrate the magic of reading and the power of great storytelling,” Scholastic Trade President Ellie Berger said in a press release. “It’s an incredible start and all the signs are indicating continued strong sales for this exciting release.”
Little Brown Book Group, the U.K. publisher of Cursed Child, reported selling 680,000 print copies in the first three days of release.
While those numbers alone will probably put Cursed Child at the top of bestsellers lists, sales numbers are significantly lower than those of Deathly Hallows, the final book in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. That sold 8.3 million copies in its first 24 hours in the U.S. and 2.7 million copies in the U.K. Cursed Child, on the other hand, is a straight script and might not yet have the instant audience that Deathly Hallows, one of the most-anticipated books in years, did.
Cursed Child is also available as an ebook, which wasn’t the case for Deathly Hallows back in 2007, so the numbers could be down due to digital purchases. Those numbers have yet to be announced, but Cursed Child is currently topping Amazon and Barnes & Noble lists.
H/T ABC News
