Children throughout the country will be going to bed early tonight after sacrificing a whole night’s sleep to discover whether Harry Potter lives or dies.

Thunder and lightning failed to deter people from standing in line outside book shops yesterday for the biggest event in publishing history. Readers who were allowed to get their first glimpse of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallowswere presented with a dilemma familiar from their last midnight vigil: whether to plough through the book from the beginning or skip straight to the epilogue.

J. K. Rowling was expected personally to give 1,700 people their first taste of the book as she read extracts of the final Harry Potter book at a moonlight signing at the Natural History Museum. Queues stretched for hundreds of metres outside Waterstones in Piccadilly, Central London, as fans awaited the witching hour – one minute past midnight – when they would be able to take their first look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Their excitement was matched by the big supermarkets, which waged a price war yesterday in a bid to outsell each other. Morrisons announced that it had slashed its price to £4.99 to undercut Asda, which is selling the title for £5. Both supermarkets will make an estimated loss of £4 for every copy sold.

Booksellers around Britain opened especially at midnight and stayed open into the early hours to cope with the Potter frenzy. More than 200 fans from all over the world queued outside Waterstone’s flagship London store before the midnight launch. Some fans even began queueing on Wednesday outside the shop to secure their place at the front of the line. Deborah Tilley, a spokeswoman for the chain, said that the heavy rain had done nothing to dampen the mood. “It is completely crazy, it has never been quite this busy,” she said.

“There are people from all over the world – from Australia, Mexico, Germany and Russia. You name it, they are here. It’s mainly people who’ve come of age with Harry, who are 18 to 25.”

Fearful of having to disappoint those who were not permitted to stay up into the small hours, Morrisons, which is opening at 8am tomorrow, is trying to ensure it has enough supplies by limiting Harry Potter sales to one copy per shopper. Asda will sell a maximum of two copies per customer for £5 each. Tesco is also selling the book at £5 to shoppers who spend at least £50 – otherwise it will be charging £10.

The rock-bottom prices compare with the recommended retail price of £17.99, set by the publisher, Bloomsbury’s.

Independent booksellers have complained that the supermarkets are selling the final book at a loss, leaving them unable to compete. But a spokeswoman for Morrisons said: “We are continuing to offer customers the best value we can bring.”

Woolworths will sell the book for £6.99 to customers who spend £10 or more instore today and tomorrow. Sales will be limited to one book per transaction. Amazon said yesterday that its global preorder sales total had reached 2.2 million – a 47 per cent increase on its previous record, which was for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It was selling one copy of the final instalment every four seconds on Tuesday this week, when preorders peaked.

Rowling has revealed that some of the characters meet a bloody end, but their identity remains top-secret. – to the fury of Rowling and her publishers. A review also appeared in The Baltimore Sun. tal, spellbinding epic” and said it ended with a “big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation”.

Keeping them quiet

— A study by the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, showed that the number of children aged 7-15 attending casualty wards fell from an average of 67 to 37 when Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was published on July 16, 2005

— The ChildLine charity estimates that call volumes will triple over the weekend as hundreds ring in grief for characters killed in the book

— Cinema managers predict that attendances at family orientated films will drop by 20 per cent as children stay at home with Potter

— Kensington Central Library said attendance at reading groups rose by a third in the week after the release of the previous Potter book

Magic numbers

250m Worldwide sales of the books before the final instalment
£1.9bn Gross box-office receipts of the five films released to date
737,000 Blogs devoted to Potter
500 Print run of the first book
£2,000 Advance offered to J. K. Rowling for the first book
£545m Rowling’s estimated fortune
£27,370 Record for a signed first edition of The Philosopher’s Stone

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