ORGANISERS of the Fringe are predicting that ticket sales will outstrip last year's record-breaking million mark.
With the Edinburgh International Festival beginning yesterday, its organisers also said they were delighted with initial sales, while The Herald-sponsored International Book Festival had around 25,000 visitors over its first two days at the weekend.
A Fringe spokesman said: ''The latest information we have at the moment is that ticket sales for last week, when the rain was bad, were up on last year when the weather was good. We have also had very good online sales.''
There have so far been 140,000 ticket sales via the website compared to 89,000 for the same time last year.
A spokeswoman for the international festival said: ''We are very pleased with the way sales have been going so far. We can't really compare to last year because the programme is completely different.''
Last year ticket sales for the festival exceeded (pounds) 2.6m, (pounds) 200,000 more than the previous record, which was set in 2000.
Fully booked events at the book festival have included Liz Lochhead, Louis de Bernieres, Melvyn Bragg, Joan Bakewell, Alexander McCall Smith, Doris Lessing and Lynne Truss.
The International Film Festival begins tomorrow.
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