Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," the seventh and final volume of J.K. Rowling's world-famous fantasy series, sold a mountainous 8.3 million (m) copies in its first 24 hours on sale in the United States, according to figures released by Scholastic Incorporated on Saturday.

No other book, not even any of the six previous Potters, has been so successful, so quickly.

"Deathly Hallows" averaged more than 300-thousand copies in sales per hour - that's more than five thousand a minute.

The 35 US dollar book, even allowing for discounts, generated far more revenue than the opening weekend of the latest Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," which came out on July 10.

And on Monday, at a New York branch of Barnes and Noble bookshop, the cash registers were still ringing hot as Potter fans lined up to get their hands on the last instalment of J.K. Rowling's series.

Barnes and Noble's Vice President of Merchandising, Kim Brown, acknowledged the phenomenon may be a one off.

"This was record breaking. We have never seen anything like it. It was amazing and I'm not sure I will ever see anything like it again," she said.

In the first 48 hours, Barnes and Noble alone sold 1.8 million (m) copies of the book.

One Harry Potter fan said that she was disappointed that it was Rowling's last book in the series.

"I've stuck with Harry Potter from the beginning and it's very sad that this is her last book, but I have very high expectations for the ending," Megan Waesche added.

While the sales figures are astonishing, they are not shocking.

"Deathly Hallows" was designed to break records, when it was released on Saturday with a first printing of 12 million (m) in the US alone, and Scholastic Incorporated said that some stores had already sold out.

Scholastic said plans for increasing the 12 million (m) print run for "Deathly Hallows" were in discussion.

Associate Editor at Forbes magazine, Chana Schoenberger, said that although the sales numbers were high it would in her opinion not influence sales of books in general.

"It's not as though people who have become Harry addicts will suddenly start going to their local bookstore every week and buying a new book, they're just not going to do that. It's unfortunate but I don't think that other types of books are really going to see much of a pick up because of this," she said.

In Britain, Bloomsbury PLC, the British publisher of J.K. Rowling's fantasy series, announced on Monday that the seventh and final volume sold a record 2.65 million (m) copies in the United Kingdom in the first 24 hours.

The previous high was for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," which sold two million (m) in its first day of release, in 2005.

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