Monday, January 01, 2007

Battle Plans

Maybe HP7 will be JKR's final Christmas gift to us in 2007? Whenever it is published, the Royal Mail is preparing for the release now.

More than 500,000 advance order copies of the sixth adventure, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" were delivered on July 16, 2005, in an operation that required about 150 additional trucks ferrying books to about 1,400 delivery offices across Britain.

While the number represents only a fraction of the 80 million items the Royal Mail delivers daily, the security surrounding the work means the books have to spend as little time as possible on warehouse floors, complicating their distribution. The 652-page "Half-Blood Prince" weighed in at less than 2.2 pounds, forcing postal workers into vans to avoid overloading their carrier bags.

The movement of the trucks is being coordinated in advance to avoid congestion, and local post offices are considering bringing in extra staff to deal with the overflow of books, Eadie said.


1 comment:

Michele said...

I shall do as I did last time around and go to a bookshop near me to buy it at a reasonably early hour on the day of publication (not midnight, mind !) - I had my copy at 8.30 am and was home and reading well before lunchtime ! I ordered book 4 from Amazon and had to wait a demd long time for the postie to show up with it - it was getting on for *lunchtime* !!