Although, to be fair, the new book doesn't seem to be quite as big of a deal here as it is in other places. (Possibly because this is the English-language release--apparently there will be a Chinese one, but it won't come out until the fall, presumably to cleverly allow millions of the inevitable unauthorized, "knock-off" translations to flood the market before then, but who knows?) Although to keep up the hype--or at least the appearance of hype--they did start selling the book at the earliest possible moment--7:01 AM Saturday morning is 12:01 AM Saturday in London--which is nice of them, but I'm thinking there wasn't too much of a line at this particular store.
Why? Because, rather than both advertising and taking preorders for said book months in advance as most bookstores did--including the English-language bookstore here in Shanghai that I go to-- they put up this sign and two small Harry Potter posters sometime late Friday afternoon, around four or five o'clock. Or, in other words, a little more than twelve hours before they would actually start selling the book, presumably so that any foreigners who happened to be walking past the shop in the middle of the night on Friday would know to show up there at one past seven the next morning in order to pick up their copy--British or American edition, your choice!--of the Half-Blood Prince. Oh, and did I mention that it gets dark here by seven or so, so the sign was only visible for three hours, if that? Clever marketing, don't you think?
So I know that millions of copies of the book were sold on Saturday, but I'd be willing to bet that not many--or even any--of the sales were racked up by this place ...
