Harry Potter casts a spell over the Internet

Has JK Rowling created a lovable hero or out of control monster in her Harry Potter character? Amazon would probably suggest the former considering that it has just announced, with no surprises whatsoever, that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has become the 'largest single-product distribution in Amazon.com's history.' Even before the publication date, Amazon had taken 2.2 million pre-orders to eclipse the previous record of 1.5 million which was held by the last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The 1.4 million pre-orders in the US alone made it the largest new-product release at Amazon ever. On the first day of sale, 1.3 million copies were actually delivered to the public and shipped to 160 countries across the world via its seven web sites. Not a bad slice of the total 20 million books that have been sold globally, 8.3 million of them in the US.