Guest article by Joan Weiner
When the official online home of Harry Potter, Pottermore, goes live this October, it will bring a little Google magic to make it happen. Google today announced on its official blog that the Harry Potter eBooks, to be sold exclusively on Pottermore, will be on the Google Open eBook platform.
Furthermore, Google Checkout will be the official digital payment system.
What this means for Pottermaniacs who wish to read the adventures of the boy wizard on a digital device is that after making the mandatory purchase of the books (or audio books) at Pottermore.com, you can then store the ebooks in the cloud on your library of Google Books or transfer them to any device that supports Google’s open ebook format.
Following Google’s announcement, Amazon, whose Kindle eReader doesn’t support Google eBooks, clarified that they’re “working closely with Pottermore,” to bring the Potter series to the Kindle as well.
The other good news for Potter fans is that the ebooks will be DRM-free, which will make transferring the books between multiple devices much easier. The eBooks will, however, be digitally signed though to prevent piracy and make any attempted piracy easier to catch.
Observers noted that the choice of Google as an ecommerce partner is a logical choice, because the opening of Pottermore will certainly cause a stampede of visitors and Google should have the capacity to handle it.
This is the second announcement in two weeks about ebook products being fully integrated with Google ebooks. Last week, Techcitement reported on the release of the iRiver, the first eReader fully integrated with Google eBooks. This latest announcement is a boost for them as they will be the eReader “native” for Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived looks like he’s finding yet another place to cast his magic in the digital world.
I found Pottermore kind of shocking, as a concept. An author who never let her books be published electronically before out of a misplaced fear of piracy, suddenly releasing them years late with no DRM at all.
Maybe her advisers wisely convinced her of the problems of DRM – it doesn’t prevent piracy. And as the last movie hits theaters, Rowling needs a way to keep her brand going. eBooks are the next logical step. Even if she loses some revenue to piracy, she’ll still make a lot from the people who will buy them. I’d also expect many special deals, like the entire series as one purchase, or enhanced ebooks that link to pivotal scenes in the movie.
The real question is will this be the start of a trend of big name authors bypassing eBook stores such as Amazon and Barnes and Noble and making their own online mini-bookstores.