Harry Potter Ebooks and Audiobooks to Appear on New Pottermore Website According to JK Rowling Harry Potter Books Photo by Alex Sharp

Harry Potter Ebooks and Audiobooks to Appear on New Pottermore Website According to JK Rowling Harry Potter Books Photo by Alex Sharp

The June 23, 2011 Pottermore announcements include the exciting news that Harry Potter will at last appear on ebooks. As Potter might say, "Accio eBook!"

JK Rowling's new Pottermore website has inspired speculation about what the Harry Potter author has planned for her fans as the series has ended in book and movie form. On June 23, 2011, many of those questions were answered by J.K. Rowling's Youtube video, in which she says, "I am thrilled to give you ...a safe, unique online reading experience built around the Harry Potter books."

What is Pottermore?

According to Rowling's video overview of Pottermore, the new Harry Potter theme site will have two highly anticipated forms of digital media blended with Harry Potter fan fictionsh, role playing games. There will be additional character information, which Rowling says she has been "hording" since the books were first written. Rowling is famous for writing her story notes in notebooks and has discussed her file cabinets full of background information about the character and places in the Potter magical world.
,Harry Potter books have been available on as CD audiobooks since the books were released, but Rowling says that digital audiobooks will be available exclusively from Pottermore. She does not say if the stories will be re-recorded, but Stephen Fry's delightful readings of the British Harry Potter books would be hard to replace.

Rowling also says that Pottermore.com will be "the exclusive place to purchase, for the first time, ebooks of the Harry Potter series." She concludes her video by saying that old fans and new fans of the book will be able to engage in the stories in a new way.

Which eBook Reader Will Have the Harry Potter Series?
The Harry Potter ebooks will appear on Pottermore in October 2011, and prices of the books have not been released. On June 23, 2011, The New York Times reported comments about the ebook series from Tom Turcan, who is the chief operating officer of Pottermore Ltd. His comments reveal that the format will be open, because Rowling wants the "books available to everybody, not ... only to people who own a particular set of devices, or tethered to a particular set of platforms." It looks like the Potter Books will be on iPhone and iPad and Android devices, as well as the Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and Kobo ebook readers.

This means that the books will probably be available in as PDF files, since those are the universal files that can be read by every ebook reader, unless this is the second small hint that Amazon is going to allow EPUB files to be read on the Kindle. The first hint that the Kindle 4, at least, could read EPUB files is that Kindle library books will use OverDrive, and OverDrive use an EPUB format.
If the books are sold exclusively on Pottermore, they will need to be download and imported to devices, and the audiobooks will need to be in mp3 files. J.K. Rowling says that interested parties should "follow the owl," which probably means sign up on the Pottermore website for more information. Another annoucement is expected on July 31, 2011.

Sources

J.K. Rowling posted "J.K. Rowling Announces Pottermore" on Youtube on June 23, 2011 with the username JKRowlingAnnouces.
The New York Times published "‘Harry Potter’ Series to Be Sold as E-Books" on June 23, 2011. The author is The Associated Press.