It seems Potter films mostly attract those who have already read the book.Last year, when Warner Brothers released the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, reaping $761m (£428m) at the box office, a mere 60,000 copies of the book were sold.The over-ordering of Half-Blood Prince is just the latest financial headache for Scholastic since it ventured out of the relative safety of its main business - publishing schoolbooks and learning software, mainly through book fairs at schools and through telephone sales - to exploit a blockbusting bestseller.In years when it publishes a new Potter, the book accounts for around 9 per cent of Scholastic's annual $2bn in sales. He expects that the release in the US of the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on 18 November will generate renewed interest in the series and mop up the overrun.However, unlike franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, where the film sparked a boom in sales of Tolkien, the opposite appears to be the case for Harry Potter. "We wanted enough books out there so every single fan could get a book when they wanted it," explained Scholastic's Kyle Good. "This was the number we came up with in collaboration with the retailers."Buoyed by the news that Half-Blood Prince had sold 6.9 million copies in the first 24 hours, 1.9 million more than on the first day of the previous Potter tome, Scholastic promptly ordered a further 2.7 million copies, bringing the total to 13.5 million."This is a cause for celebration, not just for Scholastic but for book lovers everywhere," chirped Lisa Holton, the president of Scholastic Children's Books, at the time.Now, Scholastic's chairman, Richard Robinson, whose father Robbie founded the firm in 1920, admits bookshops have been left with 2.5 million unsold copies.Mr Robinson told book-trade analysts he had no plans for accepting large numbers of returned books. Even though Americans have bought 11 million copies of the latest epic adventure, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the book remains at number two in the Publishers Weekly sales chart, Scholastic's adoption of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry's most famous pupil is causing it financial grief. Stacks of unsold copies are collecting dust in bookstores and warehouses across the US, and Scholastic - the world's largest distributor of children's books, and best known in the UK for Clifford the Big Red Dog - is bracing itself for an avalanche of returned copies.Although it bought the rights to the first in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the alternative US title), for a bargain $105,000 (around £60,000) and has since published all six Potter yarns, Scholastic has yet to work out a way of maximising profits on the runaway bestsellers.The company ordered 10.8 million copies of Half-Blood Prince, the largest print run in the history of publishing.
The magic of Harry Potter may have helped sell 300 million books in 63 languages, and made JK Rowling a dollar billionaire. But the boy wizard has cast a more sinister spell over Scholastic, his New York publisher. Ian Watmore, the head of Tony Blair's e-government unit, has told ministers they may have to phase in the controversial ID card scheme because the complexity and scale of the project is so ambitious.. The Government's most senior IT adviser has warned ministers that their ambitious identity card scheme may have to be delayed if the technology is not ready.
Among his clients were Royal Bank of Scotland and US investors Strategic Hotel Capital.He was also a director of Minerva, a stock market listed company, and of Dollar Land Holdings, the vehicle of famous former bankrupt Willi Stern.Fielding joined Lawrence Graham in 1996 after the collapse of his previous firm, Grangewoods.. It emerged that he had made 140 withdrawals from client accounts, taking at least £6.5m.Fielding was released on £600,000 bail pending his sentencing, which takes place this Thursday.Detective Inspector Denise Bains, from the Economic and Specialist Crime Command of the Metropolitan Police said: "This was a serious case of dishonesty and abuse of trust that has not only damaged the reputation felt by the firm, but has had a detrimental effect on the Law Society and the firm's professional indemnity policy and funds."Fielding, 59, was a specialist in property law. It sued Lawrence Graham for £30m in damages in a case that was settled earlier this year.Fielding fled to Florida, returning in August when he was arrested. He pleaded guilty to 24 charges of theft and admitted to 89 other charges at Southwark Crown Court last month. He left a handwritten note to the firm's senior partner admitting he had taken money from clients' accounts. Among those defrauded was London & Regional, the property developer run by the Livingstone brothers, which recently lost the battle to take over supermarket giant Somerfield.