On 20 July 2007, fans outside Waterstones in Piccadilly, London, had been queueing since the previous day for the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Reporting the next morning described a line about 1,200 yards long and 1,000 copies sold in the first hour.
For readers hoping to avoid spoilers, receiving the book early was part of the reading experience. A coordinated global release aligned clocks across countries, but a single shopfront queue still decided the local order of possession. One of publishing's largest launches made visible even the sequence in which readers could learn how the story ended.