Harry Potter

OverDrive has just released their top Downloads Lists for March, and guess who is on it?

Even though Pottermore only released the ebooks in the last week of March, and OverDrive could only distribute them for 3 days, the Harry Potter series still managed to jump on to the list. Harry Potter & The Philosopher Stone, the first book in the series, debuted as the 6th most downloaded juvenile ebook. It’s on the list as the 5th most downloaded juvenile audiobook, as well. The second book in the series also made the list as the 9th most downloaded juvenile audiobook.

Among the titles bumped by Harry Potter were Breaking Dawn, the 4th title in The Twilight Saga, as well as other titles by popular authors like John Grisham and Christopher Paolini.

OverDrive

 

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Pottermore Shop, the online destination for all things Harry Potter, has put together a series of instructional videos to help readers buy eBooks and load them onto different devices.

The ‘transfer-to-device’ videos are available on Pottermore Shop’s YouTube page, which has been updated throughout the week. It includes videos on how to load Harry Potter eBooks on the Kindle, Nook, Sony eReaders, Apple devices and via Google Play.

We’ve embedded the latest video above to give you an example.

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books now available in eBook and audiobook form through libraries thanks to a new partnership with OverDrive.

The seven book series can be checked out from more than 18,000 libraries and schools in more than 20 countries. The books are available in EPUB and Kindle in the U.S. in English. French, Italian, German and Spanish readers will have versions available soon.

Karen Estrovich, collection development manager at OverDrive stated: “Harry Potter has had an unprecedented impact on multiple generations of readers. Now that the stories are available for lending in digital formats, libraries and schools worldwide have a powerful new way to reach readers of all ages. Harry Potter eBooks and digital audiobooks have the potential to immerse a new wave of readers in J.K. Rowling’s captivating adventures and inspire a lifelong passion for books and reading.”

Amazon and Barnes & Noble both began selling eBook editions of the Harry Potter books earlier this week.

Pottermore launched their ebookstore today, and you can now also find Harry Potter eBooks in the Kindle and Nook eBookstores. The eBooks are sold via Pottermore, not Amazon and B&N, so you’ll first need to set up an  account with the site.

Once you’re there, you’ll  find that you can buy the eBooks and then download them in Epub format. But if you want Kindle, you’ll need to convert the Epub yourself or transfer the eBook to the Kindle Store. Prices start at $8 (for the first 3 books in the series), and the last 4 titles cost $10. You can also buy them as audiobooks. And after you buy the eBooks, you have the option of transferring them to your account in the Nook, Kindle, Google Play, or Sony Reader Stores.

I wouldn’t transfer the ebooks just yet. Early reports suggest that not all the bugs have been worked out. While the eBooks can be transferred to the Kindle Store, the one I bought won’t open in any of my Kindle apps. I’m still waiting for the Kindle tech support to fix it.

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

It looks like someone might be concerned about all the attention that OverDrive has been getting ever since they announced the imminent arrival of HP eBooks last month. The eBooks aren’t due to hit libraries until the end of April, but some libraries are already taking requests for waiting lists as well as pre-ordering their copies.

Here’s the message that OverDrive posted on their website:

We’re excited about the forthcoming launch of Harry Potter eBooks and digital audiobooks for library lending. We’re working with Pottermore to introduce this compelling series, and as part of the process of coordinating launch plans with Pottermore, we have temporarily suspended pre-sales and display of these titles at library websites. This is only a postponement, and libraries will soon be able to resume pre-ordering the titles in preparation for launch in April.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your understanding. We’ll keep you posted as the process unfolds.

This is a curious turn of events, but I suspect it is due to a technical issue. I bet OD’s servers were beginning to get bogged down by the requests for info about the eBooks.

Harry Potter is incredibly popular, even years after the last book was published. In fact, Pottermore managed to hit a million users in under a week back when it launched into beta in the summer of 2011.

It seems likely that OverDrive is simply pulling the eBooks now so they have time to make sure their servers can handle the load on the day that they are finally available to checkout.

I came across this video earlier this week while looking for background info on Pottermore, the Harry Potter fan site which is going to open to the public in April. It was new to me and I thought everyone might get a kick out of it.

Pottermore.com, the online destination site for all things Harry Potter including eBooks and new story lines, will open to the public in April 2012.

The site has been operating in beta since last summer and was originally slated to launch to the public in October. Pottermore.com explains the delays: “We wanted to make sure that we had a really good understanding of how people want to use the site and which bits we’d need to modify before giving more people access. We gathered some incredibly useful feedback from our Beta users, and it became clear that our original platform wouldn’t be suitable when millions more users came on to the site.”

The April full launch will be on a new platform and according to the site, over the coming weeks and months there will be new exclusive content and features such as sound.

The new Harry Potter website Pottermore is not only releasing Harry Potter eBooks for sale. The company has partnered with OverDrive to make the books available for readers to borrow through libraries.

The press release explains more: “Under the terms of the agreement, OverDrive, a leading global distributor of eBooks and digital audiobooks, will manage hosting and digital fulfillment for libraries for the Harry Potter collection of eBooks and digital audiobooks in English and more than 20 other languages to OverDrive’s growing network of over 18,000 public and school libraries worldwide.”

Charlie Redmayne, Pottermore CEO, stated: “We are keen to support public and school libraries, and OverDrive, as one of the leading suppliers in this market, provides us with a global network that helps us achieve this, as well as encouraging the discovery of these amazing books across the world.”

Pottermore, the highly anticipated online destination for J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, is having delays. The site, will include thousands of words of new content and an e-bookstore, will not include the ability to buy eBooks until next year.

CNN-IBN has more: “Harry Potter fans will have to wait a bit longer to buy the magic tales in electronic form. The creators of the online Potter portal said on Friday that the launch of an e-book store has been pushed back to next year. The seven Harry Potter books had been due to go on sale in October, exclusively through the ‘Pottermore’ website.”

Some fans have already been given early access to parts of the site. Since August, the site has been running a trivia contest called Find The Magic Quill, in which Harry Potter fans who can answer select questions are given beta logins.

The Register is reporting that the next Sony Readers will have the entire Harry Potter series when they hit store shelves this fall. According to its sources, the new Sony Readers will have the series some time in November, just in time for the Christmas season. There’s no word on price or exactly which countries the bundle will be sold in.

I would recommend taking this report with a grain of salt. The Register is not very careful about getting the details right; I’ve caught them in obvious mistakes before.

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