Thanks either to J. K. Rowling's magical way with words, or a supernatural marketing campaign, copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince began to vanish from bookstores Friday, starting just one minute past midnight.

There is no doubt the book will become a huge best-seller, despite its mammoth length of more than 600 pages, because Harry Potter has a loyal legion of fans. Many of them have literally grown up with the wizard.

"When we were ten and eleven we started reading Harry Potter and we were the same age as him," fan Pippa Mackie told CTV News in Vancouver.

"He's turning seventeen, I'm turning seventeen."

The success of the Harry Potter series is great news for Canadian publisher Raincoast Books, which has shipped almost a million copies of Prince.

"We are on par with the very best publishers in the world, and the very best distributors in the world," Jamie Broadhurst of Raincoast Books told CTV News.

In London, the book is expected to sell 10 million copies in the first 24 hours, as Potter-mania once again takes Britain by storm.

British publisher Bloomsbury and Raincoast Books gathered 70 competition-winning children from around the world inside Edinburgh Castle's Great Hall for a midnight reading by Rowling herself.

At the stroke of midnight, Rowling emerged from behind a secret panel inside the city's medieval castle to read an excerpt from the sixth chapter.

One of the lucky winners is Eun Ji An, a 14-year-old West Vancouver girl who's in Scotland now with her mother. An has read all five Harry Potter books so far, in both English and Korean.

In Canada, The town of New Hamburg, Ont., west of Kitchener, has transformed itself into New Hogsmeade with events planned for Friday night and Saturday.

South of the border, there were Potter-related events planned from New York City -- where actor Jim Dale, narrator of the Potter audio books, read from Prince in Union Square -- to Mexico City, which is planning a daylong Potter festival on Saturday.

Nearly 2,000 stores in the U.S. held parties where kids of all ages created wands, dressed up like Potter characters and placed temporary lightning-bolt tattoos on their foreheads.

Scholastic, Rowling's U.S. publisher, is making sure every person who wants a book gets one. Its first printing is an astounding 10.8 million.

Since Rowling first introduced Potter and his friends at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry eight years ago, her books have become a global phenomenon.

Rowling has become the darling of the publishing industry, not to mention the richest woman in Britain, with a fortune estimated by Forbes magazine at $1 billion U.S.

That figure speaks for itself, but there are many more in the world of Harry:

• There are 270 million Potter books in print, and they've been translated into more than 60 languages.
• The books have spawned three movies, which have brought in about $2.6 billion US in ticket sales. A fourth flick will hit theatres this holiday season.
• The Half-Blood Prince, has been No. 1 on Amazon.com's bestseller list since it was announced in late 2004, with worldwide pre-orders of more than 2 million copies.
• In 2003, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, fifth in the series, was the fastest-selling book in history. Five million copies were sold in the first 24 hours.

And while fans are whipping themselves into a stygian frenzy to grab hold of the latest Potter adventure, price wars have erupted at retailers around the world to ensure a share of the profits.

In Canada, retailer Indigo Books is selling Prince on its website for $24.60 -- down from the list price of $41 (Cdn).

In England, many chains are selling the book for about half the cover price. In the U.S., online retailer Alibris.com is offering $5 US, plus postage, for used copies.

British publisher Bloomsbury has declined to reveal how much it charges retailers per copy, but analysts suggest it would be about 55 per cent of the recommended sale price.

But not everyone, including the Pope, is going wild for Harry.

According to German writer and Roman Catholic Gabriele Kuby, Pope Benedict expressed in letters his concern that Potter books "erode Christianity in the soul" of their young readers.

Kuby wrote a book criticizing Rowling's books, which then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger read and apparently thanked her for in a letter written two years before becoming pontiff.

"It is good that you are throwing light on Harry Potter, because these are subtle seductions that work imperceptibly and because of that deeply," Ratzinger wrote, according to Kuby.

He added that the books can "erode Christianity in the soul before it can even grow properly."

The Vatican has not confirmed the claim.