PTI
 
New Delhi, Jul 22: Harry Potter fans across the country on Saturday enthusiastically snapped up copies of the final volume of the book which broke all records to register a sale of over 1.7 lakh copies on the first day of its release.
"Never in the publishing history has India witnessed such a frenzied reaction to any book. We have already sold over 1.7 lakh copies today," said Himali Sodhi, head of marketing, Penguin, which is the distributor of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Potter fans, both young and old, queued up outside book stores since midnight to lay hands on the book, the seventh and last one in the series, to know the fate of boy wizard Harry and his deadly foe Voldemort.

"I was here at 6 in the morning and quickly read the last few pages the moment I n such craze for any other book. We have been receiving pre-orders as early as March this year," said Nitin Chatterjee, store manager, Oxford bookstore.

J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published by Bloomsbury and brought to India by Penguin, is priced at Rs 975 and customers who have placed advance orders get a discount varying from five per cent to 25 percent.

Internationally, the final Potter book has become online retailer Amazon's most pre-ordered product with almost 1.6 million copies bought globally ahead of the release.