Potter-mania revives online sales

MUMBAI: Do the names Dumbledore, Prof. McGonagall, Hagrid, and Hermione ring a bell? If you are not a Harry Potter freak, these names may sound strange, but ask those millions who are struck with Potter-mania, they will swear by J.K Rowling’s brilliant piece of fiction.

All these fictional protagonists from the world-famous Harry Potter series of books had

brought back the much-abused terms like B2C into vogue again. Thanks to the record online sales of

the latest Potter escapade even on Indian virtual supermalls. And the enthusiasm does not seem to ebb.

Ask Indiatimes, Fabmall or Sify, and bosses at each of these portals would agree that Pottermania is

here to stay, even in its online avatar.






JK Rowling's series of Harry Potter outsold all other hardcover fiction titles. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone respectively occupied the top spots on the fiction hardcover list. The recent and the fifth in the series ‘Harry Potter and the Order of phoenix" is creating ripples all over the world.





Ever since the fifth version of Harry Potter has released, Indiatimes sold more than 10,500 copies and is getting 300-400 enquiries per day. The other malls are also making huge business through online sales.

According to landmarkonthenet.com Operations Head N Venkitakrishnan, "This is the highest selling book to happen online. We sold 2,500 copies online, which includes pre-release and post-release. The demand is three times more than the supply. Today there is not much supply in the market. Whatever copies were printed is exhausted. "

Prior to this, Landmarkonthenet.com observed a good online sale for books ‘Who Moved My Cheese’, ‘Tintin’, ‘Sky is Falling’, "but nothing can match Harry Potter as it has become a brand in itself.

In all Landmark has sold more than 5,000 copies. The online response has been more from the non-metros where there is no access to the stores. Responses have also come from far away places like Theni in Tamil Nadu, far end of Kottayam, Guwahati.

Harry Potter magical series of children's books has broken all the previous records for first day and first week sales for any book in the company's history. Together, its retail stores and web site have already received over 360,000 preorders, more than ten times the number of preorders for any previous book.



The level of excitement for Harry Potter surpassed any other single book-selling event in the history. The most important and magical outcome of this story is the love of reading that Harry Potter has rekindled among readers of all ages, especially young children.





This also might be the most profitable book that the online stores have ever sold when one considers the effect of an explosion of Internet in reading among this future generation of book buyers.

Fabmall, another online shopping store shipped nearly 1,000 copies of Harry Potter’s fifth book almost all of them based on pre-order in the last quarter of June. Fabmall VP- Marketing Vaitheeswaran said, "I suspect we have gotten orders to the range of 1,600 copies so far and we have shipped almost 1,200 of those books. We are waiting for a stock replenishment, which should happen between July 15 and July 20 to begin shipping out again."


"We also had some more deals happening and people who visited for the Potter book did end up picking other books also. The sales for the other books have also risen," he added.

There has never been any other book which sold so much on one single day and most of them based on pre-order. This is a unique case of the hype that was created before the release. In fact, comparing it to any other book sales wouldn’t be a case of comparing an apple with an apple.