We didn’t want to have a party in the first place. We were going to stay open until 2 AM, sell the book, and go out to the Green Mill afterward. We weren’t going to have a party, but we had to compete. Every bookstore in the known world was having a party.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
About three weeks before the book’s release date, the acronym FHP (and the F doesn’t stand for “fifth”) became the preferred referent for everything concerning our favorite young wizard. Who did we blame for the chaos in the store? FHP. Stacks of magazines found in the children’s section? Blame FHP. Short staffed? FHP again. So consumed were we with preparations for FHP that the June 9 release of Hillary Clinton’s Living History, certain to be the best-selling nonfiction book of the year, didn’t faze us in the least. By then we knew we wouldn’t have enough copies of Rowling’s book to fill initial demand. We had to tell customers that even if they reserved a copy they wouldn’t get the book on the 21st.
One of our veteran booksellers, Marianne, admonished us to remember when parents started screaming “Where’s my book?” that it’s only a book, not a blood transfusion, and that they’d live for another 20 minutes, or day, or week without it. (Probably.)
After many months of oversaturation, we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to open our own copies and savor FHP’s possible romance with Cho for months–or at least until a few days after the party. Our eyes were fixed on the dim light at the end of the tunnel: the day after our Midnight Magic Party. That night promised to be Armageddon if every screaming child and over-caffeinated adult didn’t get a book.
When the first 50 customers were called to purchase their books, a stampede thundered toward the cash registers. All six registers rang steadily for an hour and a half, as thrilled customers, young and old, clutched their copies to their chests. Half the preordered books were picked up in the first 24 hours. Barnes & Noble estimated it would sell one million copies in the first week–that many sold in the first 48 hours. They calculated that between midnight and 2 AM, 80 books per second were sold nationwide.
