Books in a brave new world: marketers in the book industry tread new territories with the launch of Harry Potter. (News Analysis).

Brand Strategy, July, 2003 by Joanna Doonar

Book marketers saw their world turned upside down last month by the launch of the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The biggest event in book marketing to date saw publishers and book stores pulling out all the stops to attract customers' attention, but some critics warned that the brand is nearing saturation point.

The scale of the global launch was a first for the book industry and book shops were left knowing that if they did not take part they would be the only losers. A total of 1,777,541 copies of the book were sold in the UK in the first 24 hours, according to Nielson BookScan. Bloomsbury, Harry Potter's publisher, gave direction in marketing but book shops' marketing teams also faced their biggest challenge yet, enhanced by...