Stores Start Potter Price War

Booksellers Battle For Harry Potter Fans By Slashing Prices

(AP) 

"They'll be ready to reprint pretty quickly, in the first week or so," said Jon Howells, a spokesman for Ottakar's bookstores.

Amazon said it has more than 500,000 pre-orders in Britain alone and more than twice that worldwide, while Asda noted that the release of the previous book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was its fastest selling item across all its departments in 2003.

"We expect to sell three times as many copies of Harry Potter in one day as we sold of "The Da Vinci Code, last year's bestselling book, in an entire year," said David Rutley, e-commerce director at Asda.

WHSmith said it has received half a million pre-orders, the most ever in its 210-year history. The bookseller, which is offering the book for $17.56, is also giving away voucher booklets that give readers $132 off future purchases.

Bookstore chain Waterstone's, which is offering the book for $21.15 said it would not be drawn into a price war. Spokeswoman Lucy Avery said "at the end of the day the book is about children and we feel it's encouraging children to read."

However, Avery acknowledged that Waterstone's was sweetening the offer to prospective buyers by throwing in a free copy of "Lionboy" by Zizou Corder.

Ottakar's, which is selling pre-order copies for $19.39, is following the same route, offering a free copy of "Bringing Up Baby Dragons," an "encyclopedia" for children on the creatures, with the first 25,000 orders.

"It's huge, this is the biggest launch of the year and will be the biggest until the next Harry Potter book," said spokesman Jon Howells.

Howells said the company, which has re-branded its 137 stores across the country "Pottakars" for the launch, had not yet decided how much it will charge for the book once selling starts on Saturday.