'Harry Potter' books are still flying off the shelves with 500 million copies sold

The sun never sets on Harry Potter; the books are still going strong.

It's been over 20 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was published. Today Bloomsbury announced that sales of books in the Harry Potter series has exceeded 500 million copies.

The most popular book in the series is the first, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, although Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is the fastest-selling fiction title ever.

An Amazon employee packs German copies of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' Credit: JENS-ULRICH KOCH/AFP/Getty Images

According to Bloomsbury, this figure means an average of one in 15 people in the world own a Harry Potter book.

A boy looks longingly at 'Harry Potter' books in Paris, France. Credit: FRANCOIS GUILLOT/AFP/Getty Images

Harry Potter is a pretty universally appealing story in general, but even more so given the fact it has been translated into 80 languages, including: Breton, Scots, and Ancient Greek.

All the multilingual Potterverses! Credit: peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Pottermore had this to say about the 500 million-book milestone:

"We think it’s fair to say that, 20 years and 500 million books later, Harry Potter still has the power to transport us to a whole new world within its pages. This is exactly why we’ll keep on reading them forever, passing them on for many generations to come."