Rowling’s magic returns with ‘Beedle’ tales today

Recession-hit booksellers are hoping for a magical boost from a new book by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

“The Tales of Beedle the Bard,” a collection of five fables mentioned in Rowling’s saga about the boy wizard, is being published around the world today with only a fraction of the carnival-like fanfare that greeted the Potter novels.

But expectations are high for the new book, which has a global print run of 8 million copies.

“We expect it will crash straight in at No. 1 in our book charts,” Jon Howells, of Britain’s Waterstone’s book store chain, said Wednesday. “It would take a battle of magical proportions to dislodge it before Christmas.”

The book’s print run sounds enormous until you compare it with the Potter books. The final volume, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” sold 8 million copies in its first 24 hours and had a print run of 12 million in the U.S. alone.