Harry Potter fans have listened to audiobooks of the series for more than one billion hours on Audible. The milestone was reached seven years after the JK Rowling books - narrated in the UK versions by Stephen Fry - were put on the Amazon-owned platform.
Pottermore Publishing said that in one billion hours you could listen to Harry Potter books one to seven 8,547,009 times, or hypothetically go through Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry more than 14,000 times. Fry said: “These statistics are astonishing. Almost every day someone will come up and tell me how important the audiobooks have been in their lives, and it means the world to me.
"From the first book, when it was all there was of Harry Potter in the world, to the final novel when the series had confirmed itself as the publishing phenomenon of our age, the experience was never anything other than a total and eternally surprising joy for me. Hurrah for Harry and hurrah for all those listeners.”
Jim Dale, narrator of the US versions, added: "Living with the ever-expanding Harry Potter family over these past 20 years has been such a joy. Especially rewarding for me has been the opportunity to touch the lives of so many young people, and the knowledge that my spoken words have brought both comfort and support when needed and, of course, always so much magic.”
The first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997, with the seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published in 2007. The books were adapted into an eight-part film series by Warner Bros Pictures starring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.
In 2015 Pottermore remastered the original English and German audio recordings of the books, and these were released on Audible that December. Jennie McCann, managing director of Pottermore Publishing, said: “It continues to astound and delight us that listeners of all kinds have made a permanent place in their lives for these audio stories."
The one billion listening hours have been calculated from measured consumption of the Harry Potter books one to seven in all Audible marketplaces globally in English, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Latin American Spanish, and Castilian Spanish.
