Like broken wands or moth-eaten invisibility capes, the books have been left to gather dust. The hyped fifth in the series, the two-volume ``Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,'' is just not flying off the shelves at bookstores.

It's not that Harry Potter fans have tired of the young apprentice wizard and all the trouble he gets into at the Hogwarts School.

Actually, the Japanese translation of Harry Potter is the best-selling book of the year here, with 2.3 million copies already sold, publishing sources estimate.

No, the problem started when bookstore owners placed overly optimistic orders for the title, fearing a big run on their stock. Unfortunately, they did so under a strict deal with the publishing house that only allows them to return 5 percent of the copies they bought from the publisher.

Junkudo Co., a major bookstore operator in Japan, ordered 20,000 copies for its 23 chain stores nationwide. However, it has only sold 70 percent of them so far.

``We cannot recover our costs (for buying the books from the publisher) unless the book sales reach 80 percent,'' said Mitsutaka Oka, managing director of Junkudo Co.

However, Junichiro Tanaka, manager of the Kyobundo bookstore in Tokyo's Meguro Ward, said: ``When I heard that the total request from bookstores had reached 2.9 million copies, I thought the figure was much too high. The publisher should have shown the final figure to the bookstores, and let them confirm.''

Meanwhile, Say-zan-sha hopes Christmas will work its magic on the books.

``We hope the book will sell well before Christmas,'' said Yuko Matsuoka, president of Say-zan-sha. ``We want to support the booksellers by running newspaper ads.''