Oh, so that’s how it ends

Just back from town, where I speed-read HP and the DH.

It’s about wizards.

I believe I know all the interesting plot points, which I won’t divulge, of course.

Every bookshop was packed to the gills with excited buyers, and less so with available copies. A stressed-out WHSmith pimpledroid was encouraging people to abandon the queue downstairs to join another queue upstairs, but nobody was taking much notice. Apparently Borders alone sold 1200 copies after midnight, with the queue snaking from the Market Street end upstairs and downstairs again.

Desperately sadly, while lunching I saw two teenage girls ask their neighbour to take a photo of them holding up their copies of the book. And around almost every corner in Waterstones sprawled a bandwagon traveller, nose embedded a hundred pages into a hardback.

Regardless of the merits of this particular book or the series as a whole, it’s got non-readers reading, which must be a good thing. It’s also made the-one-who-must-not-be-named and her publishers buckets of cash. The publishers and the retailers will no doubt beg for more stories, but she’s moneybags enough to unleash the hounds and take no notice. I hope so.

So the question for the publishers becomes: what’s next? They’ll be desperate to find “the next Harry Potter” to repeat today’s bonanza. I expect a number of failed attempts, all based on Potteresque themes, before another surprise hit. That is, after all, the way of the muggles.