Harry Potter arrived in ebook form earlier this year, which was exciting all by itself. At the same time, if you already purchased the HP series in book form, it can be hard to pony up again for the ebooks. Amazon has come up with a solution, by offering the entire series through their Kindle Prime Lending Library!
From the press release:
Read all of J.K. Rowling’s iconic Harry Potter series for free on your Kindle
Kindle Owners’ Lending Library now includes more than 145,000 books, including over 100 current and former New York Times Best Sellers
SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–May. 10, 2012– Owning a Kindle just got a whole lot better for magic-loving Muggles. Starting June 19, Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) is adding all seven Harry Potter books (in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish) to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). Harry Potter is the all-time best-selling book series in history, and Amazon has purchased an exclusive license from J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore to make the addition of these titles possible. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a benefit of Amazon Prime membership—Prime members also enjoy free two-day shipping on millions of items and unlimited streaming of more than 17,000 movies and TV episodes. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library has now grown to over 145,000 books that can be borrowed for free as frequently as once a month, with no due dates.
“We’re absolutely delighted to have reached this agreement with Pottermore. This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we’ll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “Over a year, borrowing the Harry Potter books, plus a handful of additional titles, can alone be worth more than the $79 cost of Prime or a Kindle. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library also has an innovative feature that’s of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter – unlimited supply of each title – you never get put on a waiting list.”
This is huge for Amazon. It gives them a chance to leverage the Harry Potter titles, even though Pottermore evens the playing field across multiple stores. It also gives people a good reason to pick up a Kindle and Prime membership, since frankly, you would end up spending close to the cost of Prime on the Harry Potter series alone!
Now, the downsides here are the same as all books in the Prime library. You can only borrow one book once a month, and you can only read it through a Kindle. So you won’t be able to load up the entire Potter series for free on your iPad for the next family vacation. Still, it’s an amazing deal and a huge new benefit to Prime membership!