Harry Potter still magic for book sales

Harry Potter was the wizard of book sales in 2005, topping the best-seller list in North America.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 4.1 million copies in its first day, more than any other book sold the entire year, according to Nielsen BookScan.

J.K. Rowling's most recent entry in the series about the boy wizard went on to sell 7.02 million copies in 2005.

A Million Little Pieces, James Frey's memoir about recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, was the No. 2 book of the year, with 1.77 million copies sold in paperback.

Its position proves the abiding influence of talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, who recommended the book for her book club.

Khaled Hosseini's first novel The Kite Runner, about a young boy growing up in Afghanistan, was the third on the list ofbest-selling books, followed by David McCullough's 1776, a history of the American revolutionary war.

The Da Vinci Code, which has sold 25 million copies in hardcover in the past three years, was No. 5 on the Nielsen BookScan list for 2005. Angels & Demons, an earlier novel by author Dan Brown, available in paperback,came in atNo. 8.

The Da Vinci Code seems likely to maintain its place in the top sellers in 2006, with the release in May of a movie version starring Tom Hanks.

For the first time, the book will be available in paperback. Publisher Doubleday plans to print five million copies of the paperback edition before March 28.

"Given the tremendous excitement about the film version of The Da Vinci Code, and the requests to have the book in paperback from our customers as well as the consumer, we decided the time was right to release the paperback editions," Doubleday spokesperson Suzanne Herz said Monday, according to Associated Press.

An illustrated paperback edition will also be available.

The othertop 10 best-sellers for 2005 are political commentary The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman; Christian self-help book The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren; health book You: The Owner's Manual; and young people's fantasy book Eldest by Christopher Paolini, who published his first book at age 17.