Harry Potter ebooks! Really!

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

Sure she could, sell them through the regular bookstores as well as Pottermore.

I am thrilled that the books are available. I know that I will survive the fact that it is taking longer then it should to buy them. All this does, for me, is reaffirm that this decision was silly, unnecessary, and annoying. If I could buy these through Amazon, I would have them now and I could use a gift certificate. Instead I, and others, are stuck trying to deal with a site that is not equipped to handle the traffic because she is a control freak.
....

I disagree. For years people on this site have been asking why authors can't insist ebooks be sold without ADE/AZW-style restrictive DRM and authors have said they are forced to agree to whatever the publishers want. Well, J.K. Rowling is the 500lb gorilla in the room, and she can do whatever she wants. And she wants simple watermarking.

Good for her

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by CallOfCth'reader

Perhaps it isn't about maximizing profits (on her part, at least), but about her feeling that she needed to do it in a way she felt comfortable with? We can all guess about her motives for delaying.

Selling different formats separately, instead of the way it's been done, would have been maximizing profits.

True. One price to get both epub and mobi isn't a bad deal.

Calibre users know how to do the conversion but there are plenty of folks who don't go beyond what the ereaders offer.

[soulsteelgray]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

100% agree. I seriously doubt I will be buying any of her future work. She has jerked her fans along for far too long to bring me back into the fold.

I am buying these books because I wil not be a theif and steal her work. Now that she has made it available, I will purchase it because it is the right thing to do but that is the only reason why. These books should have been available as e-books ages ago and should be available through normal channels.

As far as I can tell, the Pottermore situation is unique because Rowling controls the ebook rights as opposed to the publishers.

I also would like to point out that Rowling does not control ebook rights for her upcoming book. The Pottermore arrangement is exclusive to Harry Potter.

[ProfCrash]

She could have sold the books DRM free on Amazon, BN, Sony, Kobo and any other store she wanted to. She probably could have sold them with a watermark if she wanted to. Instead she delayed the release by years, all while releasing movies, Legos, toys, and a theme park, and then insisted that anyone who wants them has to jump through her hops to get them.

She has the right to do so. That does not mean that it is not seen by many folks as controlling behavior that has put them off of buying her products in the future. She has a right to be a control freak and I have a right to not buy her work in the future. She is not going to miss my money, it is but a drop in the ocean, but I would hope that someone is collecting how people are responding to her power play and letting her know that it has not been well received by a decent number of folks.

[plib]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

TERMS OF SERVICE:

You may not and may not permit others to do any of the following things in relation to any book or extract:

....

§ print-on-demand or copy or burn the book or extract to a device whose principal function is to act as a storage device, for example, a CD/DVD or USB stick;

So, if you've been backing up your Calibre Library, reading device etc. Stop. Now!

[DreamWriter]

Here's the link to Amazon's press release: Harry Potter Books Now Available to Read on All Kindle Devices and Kindle Apps.

In part:

Mar. 27, 2012-- (NASDAQ: AMZN)—J.K. Rowling’s fans have been waiting for her extraordinary series to be available as Kindle books and today, Amazon.com, Inc. announced that the English-language versions of all seven best-selling and iconic Harry Potter books are now available worldwide to read on all Kindle devices and any of the free Kindle apps, through a distribution agreement with J.K. Rowling’s new website and eBook shop Pottermore. Foreign-language versions of the books will be available for customers through Kindle Stores worldwide in the coming weeks. To start shopping for books in the Harry Potter series, customers can visit the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore or www.amazon.com/pottermore).

Customers will find it easy to search and find books in the Harry Potter series in the Kindle Store. They can visit the detail pages for the books and will be directed to the Pottermore Shop where they will have the option to purchase the titles and seamlessly push them to their Kindle Library, and to every Kindle device and Kindle app a customer has.

[tubemonkey]

Which reading services can I link my Pottermore Shop account with?

We have partnered with the following services to make it easy to send your Harry Potter eBook to your account. (Subject to reading service availability in your country.)

• Sony Reader online account (US and Canadian based customers only)
• Amazon Kindle (available in most countries)
• Barnes & Noble NOOK (US and Canadian based customers only)
• Google Play (This service is currently available in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States)

[whitearrow]

Good grief - I sent the books to my Kindle, but didn't direct them to start downloading anywhere in MYK. But as soon as I opened the Kindle app on my phone, all the books started auto-downloading! How about I get to decide which devices I want them downloaded to?

These had really better not count against my apparently limited number of downloads from the Pottermore store.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

She has the right to do so. That does not mean that it is not seen by many folks as controlling behavior that has put them off of buying her products in the future. She has a right to be a control freak and I have a right to not buy her work in the future. She is not going to miss my money, it is but a drop in the ocean, but I would hope that someone is collecting how people are responding to her power play and letting her know that it has not been well received by a decent number of folks.

I'm glad she's setup a site to sell direct, I think more authors should provide a direct sale option, especially one that is DRM free (watermark accepted).

Whilst I think the price is still on the high side for ebooks, I try not to spend more than £5, I'll probably buy the collection anyway as I've really wanted to read the HP books for some time but gave up buying paperbacks a long time back. Had there been any DRM other than a watermark though, there's no way I'd have considered paying this price.

[JoeD]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Good grief - I sent the books to my Kindle, but didn't direct them to start downloading anywhere in MYK. But as soon as I opened the Kindle app on my phone, all the books started auto-downloading! How about I get to decide which devices I want them downloaded to?

These had really better not count against my apparently limited number of downloads from the Pottermore store.

If it does, it'll only count once (not each time you download from amazon imo). So as long as you download one copy direct and back them up, you've got the books for as long as you want.

[soulsteelgray]

Originally Posted by ProfCrash

That does not mean that it is not seen by many folks as controlling behavior that has put them off of buying her products in the future. She has a right to be a control freak and I have a right to not buy her work in the future. She is not going to miss my money, it is but a drop in the ocean, but I would hope that someone is collecting how people are responding to her power play and letting her know that it has not been well received by a decent number of folks.

The type of control she has over the digital rights to the books is pretty huge. Sure, Scholastic and Bloomsbury are getting a cut of the profit, but ultimately it was Rowling who decreed how and where the books were going to be distributed. This is the type of control that I wish other people in the entertainment industry had over their work. At the end of the day, the only person who should decide what happens is the person the creative work came from, whether that be a songwriter or a writer, and not some executive cooped up in an office.

(I realize I'm trying to correlate Rowling's control with the lack of control music artists face when dealing with record labels, which is probably out of place in this kind of topic, but stick with me.)

When Trent Reznor left Interscope and formed his own independent label, he was able to produce and distribute his music as he saw fit and without all the red tape that came with a major record label. This also benefited the fans; where else can you announce a new album and then release it a week later?

I think what Rowling did was smart, and I hope that this is another step in reducing how much power publishers have over digital distribution. Was it a little extreme to have Pottermore be the go-to source to purchase the Harry Potter books? Sure; after all, Reznor's post-Interscope works are available on iTunes and Amazon. But Reznor also hasn't set up something the likes of Pottermore where it's ostensibly supposed to be the Harry Potter site.

tl;dr Better to leave the digital rights to the person who wrote the books in the first place, for better or for worse, because at the end of the day it's their work.

[ProfCrash]

I am fine with direct sell but I want it done in conjunction with being able to buy through Amazon. What happens when the Pottermore site dies down and there is little to no real traffic? And lets be real, the fans will go there and go nuts for a while and in a few years the action will die down. Is JKR going to pay to maintain the site 10 years from now? 20 years from now? What happens to the e-books then?

I have more faith that a compnay like Amazon is going to be around in 20 years then I do Pottermore.

I don't want to have to shop in 15 places to buy my e-books. I didn't want to do that when I was buying paperbooks and had to drive to various stores. I don't want to do that with my e-books. I want to go to the store that I choose, in this case Amazon, and buy the books I want to buy.

I don't want to have to go to Jim Butcher's site and Kim Harrison's site and JKR's site and whoever elses book I want to buys site in order to buy my reading material. I don't want to have to worry about them going out of business or something weird happening and they lose my account and books.

Yes, I save everything to my computer just to be safe, but I buy from one or two stores because I like the back ups that they have. I shouldn't have to travel to different places because of an author or a Publisher.

She could have published these years ago, without DRM, at the major bookstores. They probably would have even included the watermark option. She didn't ask them to do so because she didn't want to sell them that way. She is making her readers work harder then they have to after delaying the release of the books for ages for some pretty silly reasons.

Thank goodness they are here, finally. But I am not going to applaud what I see as controlling behavior that could be bad in the long run for people who simply want to walk into one store abd buy their books.

[ProfCrash]

Originally Posted by soulsteelgray

The type of control she has over the digital rights to the books is pretty huge. Sure, Scholastic and Bloomsbury are getting a cut of the profit, but ultimately it was Rowling who decreed how and where the books were going to be distributed. This is the type of control that I wish other people in the entertainment industry had over their work. At the end of the day, the only person who should decide what happens is the person the creative work came from, whether that be a songwriter or a writer, and not some executive cooped up in an office.

(I realize I'm trying to correlate Rowling's control with the lack of control music artists face when dealing with record labels, which is probably out of place in this kind of topic, but stick with me.)

When Trent Reznor left Interscope and formed his own independent label, he was able to produce and distribute his music as he saw fit and without all the red tape that came with a major record label. This also benefited the fans; where else can you announce a new album and then release it a week later?

I think what Rowling did was smart, and I hope that this is another step in reducing how much power publishers have over digital distribution. Was it a little extreme to have Pottermore be the go-to source to purchase the Harry Potter books? Sure; after all, Reznor's post-Interscope works are available on iTunes and Amazon. But Reznor also hasn't set up something the likes of Pottermore where it's ostensibly supposed to be the Harry Potter site.

tl;dr Better to leave the digital rights to the person who wrote the books in the first place, for better or for worse, because at the end of the day it's their work.

She could have sold the books trhough Amazon, BN, Sony, Kobo (I see that they did not work a deal with Kobo by the way), and other stores without giving up any of her rights. There was no need to sell through her own store other than her desire to be more controlling then needed.

[whitearrow]

Originally Posted by soulsteelgray

This is the type of control that I wish other people in the entertainment industry had over their work.

Yes... because what I really want to do every time I want to buy a book is go to a new web site and set up a new account and enter name, email, home address, credit card details, and come up with a new password that I have to keep track of. That makes so much more sense for me as a consumer.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by whitearrow

Good grief - I sent the books to my Kindle, but didn't direct them to start downloading anywhere in MYK. But as soon as I opened the Kindle app on my phone, all the books started auto-downloading! How about I get to decide which devices I want them downloaded to?

These had really better not count against my apparently limited number of downloads from the Pottermore store.

Can I put my eBook on multiple devices?

Yes, you can download each Harry Potter eBook for personal use up to eight times, so you can save a copy to your computer, eReader, tablet, mobile phone and any other compatible device. See Can I read eBooks on my device? for more information.

The way I read it, is that you'll get charged for a download for each device you put them on. So if you have a book on a Kindle Touch, a Kindle Fire, a desktop, a laptop, and an iPhone; you'll get charged for 5 of your 8 downloads.

My question is: if you remove a book from one of your devices, does your remaining download count increase by one?