In one of the most anticipated moments in the short history of ebooks and epublishing, Pottermore—an online community based on the imaginative fantasies of J.K. Rowling—has gone live. To the kids (and more than a few adults) who have emotional investments in the characters and alternative universe that Rowling has crafted, the launch of Pottermore comes at a time when disappointment at the conclusion of the Harry Potter series can be turned into fresh enthusiasm for a chance to enjoy the series in a new medium: ebooks.
The Elephant House (shown at the left), often cited as the inspirational source for many of the ideas that coalesced in the Harry Potter books, is also identified with other noted authors, including Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall-Smith. The Elephant House site features an intriguing interview with J.K. Rowling at the early stages of her success. Ms. Rowling did much of her early writing in a room at the back of the coffee house with a view of Edinburgh Castle.
As most fans and ebook aficionados know all too well, J.K. Rowling has been fiercely resistant to the entreaties of the publishing world to release her titles in ebook format, preferring to design her own portal around her creation and distribute the ebook versions of the Harry Potter series on her own terms. Hence, if you go to Amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com to purchase her books, you will be discretely directed to Buy from Pottermore Shop. To my knowledge, no other author or publishing house has made such an arrangement with two of the major players in the ebook world, so clearly Ms. Rowling used the strength of her successful series to negotiate this unique purchase process.
The Pottermore Shop shows the requisite spit and polish that you would expect for an enterprise associated with Sony. To purchase ebooks from the Pottermore Shop, you must first set up an account. One nice feature of the site is flexible support for the majority of ebook formats, including Kindle, Nook, iPad, Sony eReader, and a potluck option that delivers the book in epub format—without DRM—for installation on your choice of devices. The ebooks contain a watermark and personal ID, which Sony apparently feels is a strong enough measure to prevent widespread pirating of the titles. I purchased a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows using the Direct download option. I easily imported the downloaded ebook into Bluefire Reader and Kobo on the iPad with everything intact. It also imported into iBooks and Blio, but here the problems began. In iBooks, the images beneath the chapter headings were missing and occasional “This page contains the following errors” messages appeared (a problem I’ve noted in other professionally created ebooks rendered on the iBooks platform—still investigating the issue). The Blio reader did not fare so well. Although the ebook initially appeared onscreen, the Blio ereader began crashing on a regular basis thereafter. Just one more issue to investigate . . .
From the Mac desktop, I also added Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to the Adobe Digital Editions library (which is often considered the gold standard when checking out the rendering of epub formatting). The ebook was easily imported into the library and displayed perfectly within Adobe Digital Editions.
Sony and J.K. Rowling are to be applauded for breaking down the barriers to using ebooks on multiple platforms. The one format, one device model that prevails at Barnes & Noble and Amazon has been circumvented in a positive way, opening the door to a more liberated approach to epublishing that respects the integrity of the reader community and frees ebooks for use on a variety of devices. According to the guidelines on Pottermore Shop, each ebook title can be downloaded up to 8 times from a reader’s “My books” area. And the cost of the Harry Potter titles was also a pleasant surprise: $9.99, which is a refreshing change from the $13 to $16 a title being charged by many other major publishers in the ebook realm.
As a side note, the DRM-free aspects of the Harry Potter books disappear if you purchase through Amazon to add the book to your Kindle account (reported by The Digital Reader). The story has many different angles and we’ll report more on the developments over time.
The launch of Pottermore Shop and the Pottermore community represents a substantial landmark in the evolution of epublishing, which is largely due to the unique talents and uncompromising attitude of J.K. Rowling in following her vision and providing a new model for ebook sales sure to influence everyone in the industry.