Hype as Potter series nears end

The 41-year-old has described how she broke down in tears when completing the book, which ends a remarkable 17-year journey that she started as an unemployed single mother and ended as the world's first dollar-billionaire author.

Rowling first thought up boy wizard Harry Potter on a train from Manchester to London, and worked for years to turn her idea into a novel. The first book in the series, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", was published in 1997.

RECORDS TUMBLE

The six books published so far have sold 325 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 64 languages.

Hollywood adaptations of the first four stories amassed $3.5 billion (1.7 billion pounds) at the global box office, and the fifth, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", is in cinemas now.

The Potter phenomenon has been credited with encouraging young people to read more and revitalising children's publishing, but it also has its downside.

Independent booksellers stand to make little, if any money from the seventh book, with online retailers and major bookstore chains discounting heavily to guarantee big sales. Unable to compete, some shops have not bothered to order copies at all.

With so much money, and reader anticipation at stake, Rowling and her publishers have gone to great lengths to protect the contents of "Deathly Hallows", including forms imposing a publishing embargo on book stores.

One computer hacker claims to have leaked the ending of the book on to the Internet, which Rowling's publishers did not deny outright, and plot details are likely to appear online within hours of the book going on sale.