NEW YORK (AP) -- Think you've seen a lot of hype about "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"? Just wait until the book comes out.
Billboards. Baseball parks. A countdown in Times Square. Scholastic, Inc., the U.S. publisher of J.K. Rowling's mega-selling children's series, has planned a $3 million-$4 million marketing campaign, more than doubling its budget for the release of the last Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," in 2000.
"I can't think of anything that compares to the budget for the new Harry Potter book, except for the budget for the last Potter story," says Laurie Brown, a vice president for sales at Harcourt Trade Publishers who over the past 20 years has also worked for Random House and Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Timed to the midnight June 21 release of "Order of the Phoenix," the show gets rolling on what could be called "Harry Potter Eve," Friday night June 20, with a countdown in Times Square. A billboard on Sunset Strip will announce the news in Los Angeles
Posted by Madmaxime at June 7, 2003 03:47 AM