The final Harry Potter book is now Amazon's most pre-ordered item, with about 1.6 million copies bought globally ahead of its release on July 21, said the online retailer.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows beat the previous record of 1.5 million pre-orders, held by the sixth book in J.K. Rowling's wizard-in-training series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The final Harry Potter title and cover art were unveiled in March.
(Raincoast Books)

Rowling's upcoming book has topped many bestseller lists for months.

Amazon predicted Monday the demand would balloon by "many more hundreds of thousands of copies."

The first six Harry Potter books have sold more than 325 million copies worldwide, translated into more than 60 different languages.

Interest has further been stoked by Rowling's statement that two major characters would die.

"I don't always enjoy killing my characters. I didn't enjoy killing the character who died at the end of Book 6," Rowling said during a reading a year ago at Radio City Music Hall in New York, declining to name that person in case someone had yet to finish the book.

"I'd already done my grieving when I actually came to write it."

Thousands of events around the world are planned to commemorate the final book, in which teen wizard Harry is expected to have a showdown with his nemesis, the evil Voldemort.

Meanwhile, the movie adaptation of the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is due to be released this month.

Becoming a myth unto itself

The series' enduring popularity has cultural theorists predicting Harry Potter will become a lasting cult phenomenon.

Author J.K. Rowling, pictured here in 2006, has become a billionaire.
(Seth Wenig/Associated Press)

"Every phenomenon is a kind of myth unto itself, a myth about how a phenomenon becomes a phenomenon. The story of how the public embraced Potter only gives more momentum to Potter in our culture," said Neal Gabler, an American cultural critic whose books include Walt Disney and Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality.

Gabler points out a true phenomenon is never planned.

Rowling was a single mother on welfare when her book was finally signed up by the U.K.'s Bloomsbury Press in 1996 for about $4,000 US. She was told she would not likely get rich off the series.

Then, Scholastic editor Arthur A. Levine acquired the U.S. rights for $105,000 US because, according to Levine, he saw in Rowling a "unique ability to be funny, and cutting and exciting at the same time." 

Even Levine says he could have never foretold the books' wild success.

Now, there are hundreds of internet fan sites and Harry Potter conventions, as well as authors writing books about the phenomenon itself. Those books include Neil Mulholland's The Psychology of Harry Potter and John Granger's Looking for God in Harry Potter.

"When something has staying power, it's because it strikes some kind of fundamental chord," notes Gabler.

"Kids identify with Harry Potter and his adventures; they identify with his empowerment. It's all very circular. We feel empowered by making a phenomenon out of something like Potter, and Potter itself addresses the very idea of empowerment."

With files from the Associated Press