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The number of downloads is generous and the process was painless (from home)
Other then that, I have major problems with the situation.
1) The books are here now but there was no reason for the delay. It was unnecessary, led to greater pirating, and was generally annoying to fans. JKR was the rights holder and free to do what she wants. She still angered fans by delaying the release and toying with her fans.
2) I don't want to go from store to store to buy e-books. Sell them at Pottermore if you want but allow me the choice of buying them there or buying them from Amazon (or Sony or BN or Kobo) I am sorry but I do not want to remember passwords, logins, and accounts at a ton of different locations. If I want the benefit of the DRM free version, I'll go to Pottermore. If I want convience, let me buy it from Amazon. I can strip DRM easily enough so I don't really care about that. Not to mention, not many folks actually have the slightest clue about DRM and the like so they just don't care.
3) The last thing I want to see are bookstores opened by Publishing houses, individual authors, collectives of authors, and the like that make my book buying experience a pain in the butt because I have to go from store to store. Call me lazy but that will drive me nuts.
4) I do not like the control freak nature of this situation. Supposidly, one of the reasons for releasing the books this way was so everyone would have the same e-book experience, yet the UK books do not have the illustrations that the US books have. How is that the same experience? The language differences I get, well not really, suck it up and figure out the British slang from the context, not a big deal, but why leave out the illustrations?
5) There are geographic restrictions on the books, you have to gift the UK books to yourself if you are not living in the UK. That is silly. She controls the rights but does not allow people to decide that they want the UK version if they live in the US? What?
6) The password was silly but easily dealt with. One capitol letter and one number and you were good to go. No problems there really. I have a feeling that is more to protect accounts in the Pottermore sight that one day will open to the public.
7) And what do you do with all of your downloads when the Pottermore site closes? How long do you think Pottermore is going to be a huge hit for? It is not going to take folks all that long to do what they want on the site, get bored, and leave. What happens when they decide it is no longer profitable to maintain the shop and they close it? I hav emore faith that Amazon is going to be around for the next 20 years or so then I do Pottermore. Yes, I have backed my books up but how many folks do that? What happens if we see more of this type of thing and then the smaller stores fold because there is not enough business? People have lost books at Smashwords and other smaller stores when books were pulled by Publishers. What is the response going to be when smaller bookstores close down?
There was no reason to go this route. The books could have been distributed without DRM through the major stores. All of the major stores sell e-books without DRM. I have a feeling that all of the bookstores would have worked with JKR to get the watermark she wanted in there.
Nevermind the fact that the watermark is going to do little because there are already professional grade pirated versions available on the web. No one really needs to pirate the new release since that has already been done.
I am glad that I could legitimatly buy the e-books. I promised I would after I pirated them years ago so I did. I will do my best to not buy from another store front like this because I think they are a bad idea and I do not like the inconvience.
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