Harry Potter Series turns 20!

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Harry Potter is a name that’s known around the world. Did you know that the ever popular series has been translated into 79 languages including Greek ((? ???? ????? ??? ? ??????????), Finnish (Harry Potter ja viisasten) and Vietnamese (Harry Potter và Hòn ?á Phù Th?y)? And that’s just one example of the success of the series that took the world by storm.

26th June 2017 will mark 20 years since the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published by Bloomsbury. Celebrations will be taking place across the globe, and Cartridge Save, an online cartridge company, has created an infographic to show off the best and biggest of the stats around the first book and the series as a whole.

Fun Facts – compared to other books

The first incarnation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was actually turned down by a total of 12 publishers before Bloomsbury latched onto the series for an advance of only 1500 copies. That number now pales in comparison to the 107 million (a number that is ever increasing) that have been sold worldwide and the 504 million copies sold of the series as a whole, making Harry Potter the bestselling series ever.

In comparison, other popular bestsellers include:

  • Don Quixote: 500 million (bestselling standalone book)
  • Fifty Shades Trilogy: 100 million*
  • The Hobbit: 100 million
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: 85 million
  • The Da Vinci Code: 80 million

Interestingly though, the UK appears to prefer Fifty Shades of Grey to Harry Potter – Amazon UK has actually sold more copies of this than it has the entire Harry Potter series.

Words

The infographic details how many words are in each of the bestsellers too:

  • Harry Potter (full series): 1,084,170
  • The Philosopher’s Stone: 76,944
  • Don Quixote: 405,552
  • Fifty Shades of Grey: 155,749
    (Fifty Shades Trilogy: 497,308)
  • The Hobbit: 95,022
  • The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: 36,363
  • The Da Vinci Code: 143,139

Unsurprisingly, “the” is the most popular word in the Harry Potter series and “Harry” is the most popular character (with 166612 mentions), with Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore trailing behind. And despite the fact that the books can mostly be described as action-packed, the most frequently used phrase in the series is “nothing happened” followed by “Harry looked around” and “Harry stared”!

Harry potter – Books that became Blockbusters

Not only is Harry Potter known in book form, it’s also become a popular movie (and incidentally, theme park) franchise too. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 2) is one of the highest grossing films ever (number 8 at the time of writing), and is the top grossing movie that was once a book. This compares to other books that took on the big screen:

  • The Deathly Hallows (Part 2): $1.34 billion
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: $1.12 billion
  • Alice in Wonderland (2010): $1.03 billion
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: $1.02 billion
  • The Hunger Games: Catching Fire: $858.4 million

 

 

Cartridgesave.co.uk is the UK’s largest dedicated printer cartridge company. They offer next day delivery on more than 7,200 printer ink and toner cartridges from 62 big brands and compatibles, plus printer paper and labels.

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