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My take on this is that they are not claiming to compatible with Kindle at all. Excerpt from the article:
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) will be cut out as the middleman and could be forced to open up the Kindle to new book-publishing formats. we know that the site will be the only place to buy Harry Potter e-books and that they will be compatible with a range of devices. Rowling stressed that selling the books directly “means we can guarantee people everywhere are getting the same experience and at the same time,” and Pottermore CEO Rod Henwood told The Bookseller, “We want to make sure anyone who buys it can read it on any device. We are talking to the Kindles, the Apples, the Googles, Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) to make sure they are compatible. We set the pricing, we maintain the policy of making them available to as many readers as possible.” We don’t know if that means that Pottermore.com will be selling multiple editions of the Harry Potter books—in the Kindle format, say, alongside formats like EPUB—but it seems more likely that the site would sell e-books in just one format, probably EPUB.
My view on the areas in bold :
1. Taking Amazon out of the loop frees up the publisher to make their product available any reader they choose. The entire HP series being the cash cow it is, Amazon would be crazy to not do everything they can INCLUDING finally allowing the Epub standard on Kindles if it comes to that.
2. "They will be compatible with a range of devices." No one is saying exactly what devices they will be compatible with at this point, but when you combine this with the statement that they are probably only going to publish it in the Epub format, you can pretty much guess what devices it is going to work with; the ones that currently support Epub. Again Amazon has an important business decision to make, or a lot of pressure to throw on Rowling & company.
3. "We want to make sure anyone who buys it can read it on any device." This is a broad, but somewhat unclear statement. Some people will take it to mean "I can read my HP books on any device on the planet." I personally think it means they are considering allowing you to read your books on any device you have registered with them as an "authorized device" kind of like how you have to register your Kindle, Sony, Nook, and get a device ID with those sellers. Here again, the reading device will have to support their publishing format which at this point looks to be Epub.
All in all, this is going to make for some pretty interesting conversations on our part until they come out and state exactly what is going to happen. You folks keep up the conversations. I enjoy the reading and every now and then I might even add my own
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