Summary

TAPE: EF03/0553 IN_TIME: 05:38:31 DURATION: 2:58 SOURCES: APTN/VNR RESTRICTIONS: DATELINE: New York June 13/16, 2003 SHOTLIST: APTN June 16, 2003 1. Wide exterior of "Toys R Us" store in Times Square 2. Large television screen outside store proclaiming "Harry Potter is coming" 3. Wide pan from Harry Potter sign to wall of Harry Potter products inside toy store 4. Price tag for "Harry Potter Spin Pop" 5. Tess and Tori O'Dwyer, two sisters shopping for Harry Potter memorabilia 6. "Harry Potter" products 7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tess O'Dwyer, Harry Potter fan "Really excited and getting really impatient." 8. Tess O'Dwyer looking at Harry Potter toys 9. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tess O'Dwyer, Harry Potter fan "They're funny, they're interesting, there's a lot of cool adventures and it's just really fun." 10. Tess and sister Tori shopping 11. SOUNDBITE: (English) Tori O'Dwyer, Harry Potter fan "I've only read the first, because I really don't like reading that much, or I don't like long books, but I've seen both the movies and I really like them." AMAZON.COM VNR June 13, 2003 12. Security guard checking id's 13. Woman moving box of books in warehouse 14. Close-up stack of Harry Potter books 15. Man moving stack of Harry Potter books APTN June 16, 2003 16. Wide interior of Barnes and Noble store in New York 17. Display set up to await the arrival of Harry Potter book 18. Close-up of earlier Harry Potter books 19. SOUNDBITE: (English) Nanci Stern, Barnes and Noble "For this store we're having magic shows all night, we're having a reading featuring a secret celebrity we're not letting anybody know. We are having raffles, we are decorating the whole store to make it look like Hogwarts the castle. So it's a really big deal, like I said the most highly anticipated book of the summer." 20. Wide exterior, Books of Wonder, an independent children's bookstore in Manhattan 21. Close-up Harry Potter window display at bookstore 22. Peter Glassman, Books of Wonder Owner 23. SOUNDBITE: (English) Peter Glassman, Owner, Books of Wonder "Harry Potter might represent as much as one percent of our sales for the year which is astronomical if you think in terms of we carry over ten thousand titles, and for one book to achieve one percent means it's selling an outrageous amount of books." 24. Wide shot of Books of Wonder store AMAZON.COM VNR June 13, 2003 25. Various shots of Harry Potter book in Amazon.com warehouse STORYLINE: With the release of the latest Harry Potter book set for Saturday (June 21), bookstores in the United States are busily preparing for what is expected to be the fastest selling title ever. J.K. Rowlings' "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is the fifth instalment in the Harry Potter series. Eight million copies have been printed by publisher "Scholastic." Barnes and Noble, the world's largest bookseller, expects to sell over one million copies by June 25th. Smaller independent bookstores like Books of Wonder - a childrens bookstore in Manhattan - would normally order between forty and sixty copies of a new book. But for Harry Potter they've ordered 1000 and expect those to be sold-out by the end of the weekend. Some retailers like "Toys R Us" are using the book's launch to push Harry Potter merchandise ranging from Lego kits to lollipops. The Barnes and Noble store in New York's Lincoln Center will be decorated to look like Hogwarts Castle from the Harry Potter stories, and Books of Wonder will have live owls. Because of the secrecy surrounding the book's plot, US warehouses and distribution centres storing the work have hired extra security guards. And pre-orders are being readied for mailing so they'll arrive at customers homes on Saturday. Barnes and Noble says it has 1,755 tons of Harry Potter books in its warehouses ready to be loaded onto trucks in what it's calling the largest logistical operation in the company's history.