The Pottermore Shop
Pottermore, an “online reading experience built around the world of Harry Potter”, launched in beta yesterday after some delays. As well as becoming a destination where fans of the book series can interact with the brand, Pottermore also includes a digital book store where all seven Harry Potter novels are sold exclusively in digital form – crucially bypassing traditional publisher and online retailers alike.
The Pottermore Shop is the only destination where digital copies – text and audio – of the Harry Potter series can be purchased. Initially they’re available in International and American English only, with French, Italian, German and Spanish editions scheduled in the coming weeks.
The Harry Potter ebooks are “compatible with all leading reading devices and platforms”, including Sony’s Reader, Google Play, Amazon Kindle and NOOK. This basically means they can be read on any Android or iOS device (iPod, iPhone and iPad), Mac or Windows PC, as well as more dedicated reading devices like the Kindle and NOOK.
Digital editions of each novel typical cost £2 less than its print counterpart.
Although the books are only available exclusively from the Pottermore website, Amazon and Barnes & Noble do have affiliate marketing arrangements in place – meaning they simply refer potential buyers to the Pottermore website for a small, and unknown, percentage of any resulting saleme.
By taking control of digital publishing, the books’ author J.K. Rowling can expect to receive around 70-90% of online sales. Compare this to 12.5-17.5% a typical publisher would pass on to the author. Large retailers are losing out also as the transaction no longer takes place on their system where appropriate seller fees can be deducted. Instead, they might earn money by referring potential buyers, albeit significantly less than before.
It’s easy to see the advantages an author might have by taking most of the control away from publishers and large retailers. The Harry Potter brand is strong enough and wealthy enough to do this, but can other smaller authors emulate?
AI is quickly becoming part of the healthcare toolkit. It’s reshaping how care is delivered,…
Latin America is set to welcome leading professionals of the industrial maintenance sector to the…
Immigrants in the U.S. are behind 55% of unicorn startups- valued at $1 billion USD…
Europe’s digital landscape is entering into a new phase of openness. For the first time,…
DARPA is metaphorically manifesting Eris, the Greek goddess of discord and strife, by attempting to…
Since the moment powerful Large Language Models (LLMs) hit the market, the promise of GenAI…
View Comments
@thesociable It really will be interesting to watch Pottermore. The DRM outcry has started already http://t.co/gh1l1BaL
@donal_cahalane Oh dear! So if you initially buy it DRM-free and choose Kindle as your detonation, Amazon add DRM protection along the way?
@darrenmccarra Yup *facepalm*
@donal_cahalane Would it then work on the Kindle app for Android and iOS?
@darrenmccarra I'd imagine so. The stuff I buy for my Kindle works on my Mac OS Kindle desktop app.
@thesociable It really will be interesting to watch Pottermore. The DRM outcry has started already http://t.co/gh1l1BaL
@donal_cahalane Oh dear! So if you initially buy it DRM-free and choose Kindle as your detonation, Amazon add DRM protection along the way?
@darrenmccarra Yup *facepalm*
@donal_cahalane Would it then work on the Kindle app for Android and iOS?
@darrenmccarra I'd imagine so. The stuff I buy for my Kindle works on my Mac OS Kindle desktop app.