30.10.03
Sales
of Harry Potter audiobooks top the one million mark
Cover
to Cover Cassettes Ltd is delighted to announce that the sales of
the series of five Harry Potter books on audio have topped the one
million sales barrier - a figure unprecedented in the UK audio market.
Expectations
of the audio release of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix, on 22 September were high. Initial sales into the
trade achieved a staggering 80,000 units with pre-orders at a record
high particularly through Amazon, WH Smith, and mail order. In addition,
the sales team gained new distribution outlets at release across
both Tesco's and Sainsbury's who stocked a new audio release for
the very first time.
Steven
Edney, Sales Director of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Audiobooks, commented: "Harry
Potter has broken all the rules in the audio category. The brand
is now worth over 30 million pounds at retail - a truly remarkable
and unique achievement for the audio market."
Produced
by the independent production company, HNP Ltd, Stephen Fry's award-winning,
and much-praised, readings of the Harry Potter books have resulted
in Fry being regarded as 'the Voice of Harry Potter'.
Helen
Nicoll of HNP Ltd. commented: "When
we published the first book we said that if we made 10,000 sales
of such a long unabridged book, that would be a fantastic achievement.
To make a million sales is almost unbelievable. I like to think
of the stories being switched on all over the country at bedtime."
Steven
Edney added: "The support from the trade has been terrific
with over 15,000 pieces of point-of-sale merchandised in UK retail
outlets. WHS and Waterstone's have been fantastic with support from
right across their buying and merchandising depts. In addition,
the backing we've had at store level has been crucial to making
the launch such a success."
Sales
were also supported by a high-profile publicity campaign on launch,
with Stephen Fry interviewed across all media including the Sunday
Times, Radio Times, and a audio reading 'masterclass' on Channel
4's Richard & Judy Show.
The
marketing campaign capitalised on Stephen Fry's magnificent reading
by utilising unprecedented 1 minute 30 second radio adverts across
UK commercial radio for a week from the day of launch. Newlink Network
estimates that 13,435,000 people (23.73%) aged 4+ heard the radio
campaign (nearly a quarter of all people in the country) for an
average of 2.86 times. This was complemented by a viral internet
campaign which broke all internet advertising records with over
150,000 clips being viewed in a week.
Cover
to Cover Cassettes predicts that sales of Harry Potter 5 on audio
will have reached 100,000 units in the run up to Christmas, easily
making this the biggest selling audiobook ever launched in the UK.
Notes
to Editors:
Cover to Cover Cassettes Ltd. is an imprint of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Audiobooks which
forms part of the consumer publishing division of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Worldwide.
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Audiobooks is the market leader in spoken word audio publishing
in the UK. The business encompasses a range of imprints including
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Radio Collection (titles derived from new and archive radio
programming), Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Cover to Cover (unabridged readings of children's
books), Cover to Cover Classics (unabridged readings of classic
literature) and Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Word for Word (unabridged readings of popular
fiction).
The
Harry Potter titles are published under their own Cover to Cover
Cassettes Ltd imprint, which was originally developed by Helen Nicoll.
Helen Nicoll owns the audio publishing rights to the five Harry
Potter books. Her independent company, HNP Ltd, produces the recordings
of all the Harry Potter titles and Cover to Cover Cassettes Ltd
publishes these under licence from her.
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