Harry Potter worked his magic at Barnes & Noble Inc.’s bn.com. Sales of the seventh book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, contributed the bulk of the second quarter sales increase at bn.com, which is No. 33 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.
Q2 sales at bn.com increased 17.9% over Q2 a year earlier to $97.5 million from $82.7 million, Barnes & Noble reported today. The company sold 400,000 Harry Potter books online. Without that boost to sales, bn.com’s sales would have increased 7.3%, the company says.
By contrast, Amazon.com Inc. sold 2.2 million copies of the Harry Potter book.
The same phenomenon occurred offline. Barnes & Noble’s comparable stores sales were up 4.4% in the quarter. But without Harry Potter, comp store sales would have been up only 1%. The company sold 1.7 million copies of the book in stores.
Total sales at Barnes & Noble increased 7.6% in the second quarter to $1.24 billion from $1.15 billion a year earlier. Store sales were up 7.3% to $1.1 billion. The web accounted for 7.8% of all sales at Barnes & Noble, up from 7.2% a year earlier.
Second quarter net earnings were $18.1 million up 9% from $16.6 million a year.
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