J. K. Rowling has returned to sprinkle much-needed magic over Christmas book sales. Year-on-year book sales registered a decline for the first time in seven years last week and a report from the Booksellers Association in November cautioned that its British members were locked in a “vicious circle” of discounting, shrinking growth and smaller profits.

The publication of The Tales of Beedle The Bard yesterday offers a gleam of hope. A year and a half on from the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and last book in the series, bookshops all over the world opened from midnight as Harry Potter mania enjoyed a revival .

The Tales looks a safe bet for the Christmas number one slot. More than seven million copies have been printed in 28 languages, and retailers say it could overtake Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye to become the bestselling book of 2008.

For booksellers, many of whom are discounting the £6.99 book, The Tales alone will not redeem a difficult year. What they will do is lure in shoppers.

Rowling hosted a children’s tea party in Edinburgh yesterday to celebrate the launch of the book, which she had intended originally to be an extremely limited edition of just seven copies. Six of them, handwritten and illustrated by the author and bound with leather, silver and moonstone, were given to the people who had done most to support her during the 17 years it took to complete the Harry Potter series.

The seventh was auctioned at Sotheby’s last December, with the money going to the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG), the charity Rowling set up with Emma Nicholson, the MEP. Expected to fetch something in the region of £50,000 it proved the enduring power of the Potter phenomenon when it eventually went for £1.95 million, a record for a modern literary manuscript.

The author changed her mind about publishing it more widely earlier this year, she said, because “there was quite a lot of high feeling from Harry Potter fans that only someone who had £2 million could afford to read the book.

“I thought ‘Fair point’, so I thought I’ll publish it and then the charity can have that money too.” Rowling has donated all the profits from The Tales to CHLG.

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