Twilight vamp book launches Harry Potter-style

Bookshops are calling it the biggest event in children's publishing since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Breaking Dawn, the heavily embargoed final novel in American author Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, was published in the UK yesterday, and sold over 20,000 copies in its first 24 hours on sale.

The young adult fantasy series follows the story of human teenager Bella, who is torn between her feelings for Edward, a vampire, and Jacob, a werewolf. It kicked off with Twilight - which is being made into a film for release in the UK in January - and was followed up with New Moon and Eclipse. Twilight's publishers Little, Brown estimated it sold around 20,000 copies of Breaking Dawn yesterday, which it said was a "fantastic" number.

Book chain Borders opened stores early yesterday morning to mark the release, and children's buyer Becky Stradwick said that fans were queuing from the early hours to get their hands on the book. Stradwick said the launch was "the closest thing we've had to Harry in recent times - it's phenomenally exciting, and it's only going to grow". She predicted that sales would continue until Christmas, with the Twilight film boosting numbers. "What started out as a cult interest fan base has spread," she said. "It's one of those things that has a massive crossover appeal. It's a real guilty pleasure for grown-ups."

Waterstone's said it had received thousands of pre-orders for Breaking Dawn, which was "flying off the shelves". A spokesperson said: "We knew this was going to be huge, but it looks as if it's going to be absolutely huge. We haven't seen this level of excitement about any children's book bar Potter in many years. We've had thousands of pre-orders and it's exceeded even our expectations." Waterstone's staff were asking customers if they were in "team Edward" or "team Jacob" as they entered stores, she added.

The Twilight phenomenon has been led by the US, where Little, Brown has estimated it sold 1.3m copies of Breaking Dawn on August 2 when it was released.