Amazon announced today that over one million pre-orders have been placed for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. This breaks the previous record, held by the sixth Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  In honor of the occasion, Amazon announced that it would drop the price of pre-ordered copies from $18.89 to $17.99 (fear not, you who ordered yours early -- the price is dropping for all the pre-orders, yours included).

Barnes and Noble also reported pre-order figures, with over 500,000 copies easily breaking the bookseller's records.  No word if they wil also drop their prices, but those of us planning on attending the midnight release parties can hope.

Scholastic Inc. is milking the release of the final book for all it can, with lead-up promotions, online games, tie-ins, and so on.  (Today a Potter fan gleefully showed me the new coloring book.)  With the release just over two months away, it's only going to get crazier from here.