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NEW YORK (AP) -- Boy wizard Harry Potter is still weaving magic in his third week of release, flying off bookstore shelves and Web retailing sites at a steady pace.
Both the U.S. and British publishers of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth book in the series by 34-year-old British author J.K. Rowling, have already gone back to the presses for additional print runs.
Meanwhile, some readers have already placed orders on Amazon.com's U.K. Web site for the as-yet-unwritten Book 5 in the best-selling series, expected to be released next July.
In Britain, supplies of "Goblet of Fire" have dwindled so quickly since the July 8 release that Bloomsbury, publisher of the U.K. edition, is already on its 13th reprint, a company spokeswoman said Wednesday. So far London-based Bloomsbury has delivered nearly 2.3 million copies to booksellers -- 800,000 more than the initial print run.
Similarly, the book's U.S. publisher, New York-based Scholastic Inc., has ordered another 3 million copies, after having distributed all of its 3.8 million initial print run.
To put the demand into perspective, small bookstores say hardcover children's books rarely see double-digit sales in a single month.
"We have never sold this many books in such a short period of time before," said Becky Whidden, manager of The Children's Book Shop in Brookline, Mass. "We've sold maybe 50 or 70 books in a week -- like Philip Pullman's 'The Golden Compass' and 'The Subtle Knife' young adult novels -- but nothing like this. With most books, we sell only five a week in hardcover."
Amazon.com has sold more than 457,000 copies of "Goblet of Fire" as of July 25, spokesman Bill Curry said Wednesday. Of those, 350,000 were ordered prior to the official release -- more than six times the Web site's previous prepublication record, set by John Grisham's "The Brethren" in March.
New York-based Barnes & Noble Inc. sold 502,000 copies by the close of business July 9, making it the biggest weekend in the bookstore chain's history. About 360,000 were pre-ordered, and 100,000 came through the bookstore chain's Web site. The company declined to release updated sales figures.
Booksellers say the only other books of this magnitude in the children's category are the Potter predecessors, the first of which was published in 1995. The series has so far sold 35 million copies worldwide, and hold the top four slots on the newly launched New York Times Children's Hardcover Best Sellers list.
The publishers say Rowling hasn't started writing the next installment in her planned seven-part series -- but advance orders have already placed the unnamed Harry Potter 5 on the Amazon.com's U.K. Web site's best-sellers list, where it is retailing for 14.99 pounds ($22.73).
Amazon.com's U.S. site does not offer the fifth book because Scholastic, unlike Bloomsbury, has not released an ISBN number or publication date.
