In what is a huge surprise (as it isn’t yet April), the Pottermore Store opened up today to the public including ebook versions of all seven Harry Potter books. As noted at the WSJ, the ebooks will spread to the Kindle, Nook, Sony and Google Play shops (but not Apple):
By selling the e-books on her own site, Ms. Rowling will keep most of the revenue, rather than sharing much of it with her publishers as is usually the case. Several major retailers will have the opportunity to participate. Mr. Redmayne said that Harry Potter fans will be able to buy the digital books via links on bookstores operated by Sony Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Google Inc. In those cases, the digital editions will be downloaded directly to the Sony Reader, Kindle, the Nook and Google Play from the Pottermore site. The retailers will get a cut of the sales.
Please do not confuse ‘on sale’ with ‘discounted pricing’, but rather use the older connotation of ‘available’. The first three ebooks are $7.99, with the last four at $9.99, and a special collection price of $57.54.
To check compatibility, head to the Pottermore FAQ.
Will you buy them now? Will you wait for the Kindle/Nook specific editions? Or has it just been too long? Let us know!
Head to the Pottermore Store for more details or to grab the ebooks!
Update: You can go to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony or Google to buy for your device – but the purchase directs back through Pottermore and you’ll need an account there as well.
The process is functional, albeit a bit inconvenient, and definitely driven by greed. Funny thing that these and other titles like “The Hunger Games” are simply not available through Apple’s iBooks. Funny that they are accused to driving the market (and trying to help publishers control prices) yet they are not carrying some of the hottest titles of the year!
I completely agree! I was stunned to see that the Potter books aren’t available via iBooks–a huge missed opportunity for Apple, and more proof of Carly’s thesis that Apple isn’t really paying much attention to the iBooks side of the business. (Which is too bad, since I think the iBooks app is the best of the lot–not by much, but still.)
Oh boy; *another* place where I have to “sign up” before I can buy something! I’m *sooooooo* happy to do that! I *love* entering my name, address, and other personal information across non-secure network lines to various greedy commercial web sites! Yes! Happy happy happy!
(This is when we really need a “dripping with sarcasm” font.)
Fully justified text! Arrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!
*Not* fully justified in the nook app; just in the Kindle app. Looks like it’s an Amazon thing, not a Pottermore thing.
I can’t even express how much it drives me crazy that the Kindle app *still* doesn’t let you select ragged-right or change the justification; just goes to show that Amazon doesn’t really give a crap about people reading their stuff on the app–they only want to sell Kindles. I understand the logic, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t honk me off.
I bought the complete set for my Kindle. Can’t wait to start reading them!
Apparently Apple was not down with booting people over to Pottermore for the actual sale so that’s why they aren’t in iBooks.
And the good news is that you can download them up to 7 times for any other format! I see this as nothing but a win.
I also purchased the set – I’ve read each at least twice, but I love the idea of being able to actually search for things using the Kindle, plus the ability to just pick up the series if I have nothing else to read on the Kindle.