Second Christmas
When Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released it will be like a second Christmas to Postal Services. Apart from Christmas, the busiest days for the various postal services are the days directly following the release of a new Harry Potter book. The Royal Mail in the UK is already making plans for the release of Book 7 according to an article today on CBBC, the news service on the BBC geared for kids and teens.
Apparently a good 500,000 copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince were delivered to UK homes in 2005. Just think…if a hardcover copy of Half-Blood Prince weighs 36 ounces, or 2.25 pounds, that means the Royal Mail carried approximately 1,125,000 pounds of Harry Potter. That’s a lot of Potter. No wonder they start making delivery plans before the release date is even announced.
Let’s look these numbers another way: African Bull Elephants typically weigh between 9,000 and 13,000 pounds, so taking an approximate weight of 11,000 pounds, the Royal Mail delivered the equivalent of 102 African Bull Elephants when it delivered 500,000 copies of Half-Blood Prince.
Or, if you want to go even bigger, the Royal Mail delivered the equivalent of about 4 Blue Whales.
January 3rd, 2007 at 6:27 am
You can already pre-order the new book on Amazon so it’s no wonder we all get them delivered! The Deathly Hollows is going to be even more important as I need to read it before the ending gets leaked and I stumble across it online.