Harry Potter — the series Americans, Brits, and the world alike have been enamored with for the past 14 years — is finally available in ebook form on J.K Rowling’s own Pottermore website. At times, it seemed as if the Harry Potter books were as much in the past as the wizards and witches in the books. The final segment of the Harry Potter mega-franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was released almost five years ago and only now can you purchase them in digital form. As ridiculous as that is, Potterheads can now buy the first three books for $7.99 each and the last four for $9.99 each. While you do need to create a Pottermore account, you can buy ebooks for the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, Google Play, and even ePub formats, downloadable up to eight times in whichever format.
What’s great about this is the openness of the system in that if you have an iPad and a Kindle you can download it on both without needing to pay for two proprietary versions (though for the iPad, you’d need to use the ePub version as it’s not in the iTunes store).
What’s not so amazing is that these e-books are basically just text with many of the original illustrations, which lack any cool additional features. While additional enhanced versions will come out with videos and audio features, these may not be out until Pottermore.com eventually comes out of beta in April. Regardless, Harry Potter in ebooks form is exciting and I for one can’t wait to download it on my new iPad.
I guess I’m old fashioned, but I still prefer paper and ink.
Nice.
Accacio iPad!
The books have been in digital form for over 5 years. The only difference is that JK Rowling has not been making money off of them. That is what happens when you spurn technology.