Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is poised to become the best-selling book of all time in Canada.
Jamie Broadhurst, director of marketing at Raincoast Books, estimates that between 650,000 and 700,000 books were sold on opening weekend in Canada. And the new book is tracking ahead of Order of the Phoenix -- the best-selling novel in Canadian history -- by about 15 per cent.
Indigo, Chapters and some Coles bookstores reported an average of 1,200 transactions a minute in the two hours following the much-anticipated midnight release of the sixth and penultimate book in the series.
The largest book chain in Canada is recording sales 30 per cent higher than the last Harry Potter instalment.
On Amazon.ca, The Half Blood Prince is already the second bestselling book in the website's history, surpassed only by The Order of the Phoenix. Globally, advanced orders of the new book reached 1.5 million. In Canada, Harry Potter books one through five have sold eight million copies in total.