Breaking Dawn shatters records

A few (million) of you have been holding your breath, waiting for the midnight release last Friday of Stephenie Meyer’s last installment of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn. Will Bella end up with Edward or Jacob? And what’s this about a wedding scene? (Don’t draw any conclusions!)

Yesterday, Meyer’s publisher released sales figures for the first day of Breaking Dawn‘s release, and the numbers are big. Really big. MTV.com reports:

Hachette Book Group announced today that the fourth and final novel in Stephenie Meyer’s #1 internationally bestselling Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn, shattered first day sales records for the company. HBG estimates that sales on the August 2 on-sale date were over 1.3 million copies.

Julie Bosman of the New York Times writes:

Barnes & Noble planned to hold vampire-theme parties in more than 600 of its stores on Friday night, and invited readers to arrive in costume, socialize and play Twilight trivia. Borders Group was expecting more than 100,000 fans at 900 Twilight-theme parties at its Waldenbooks and Borders stores.

Carol Memmott at USA Today counters: “Still, nothing competes with Harry Potter. Last July, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sold 8.3 million books in its first 24 hours on sale.”

Fans who needs more Twilight in their lives can recreate the author’s personal soundtrack, created while penning the final volume on her website. Crafty souls out there might be tempted by a free knitting pattern for Eclipse socks, embellished with the ribbon motif from the cover of the third book in the series.

I’d love to say I managed to attend a midnight party last weekend, but I have to admit, I’m waiting for a four volume Twilight set to be released – perhaps in time for the holidays?