Harry Potter series to be sold as e-books

[MaineDem]

The seven Harry Potter novels are to be sold as e-books for the first time in October.

Author JK Rowling announced the series will also be available as audiobooks through a new website, Pottermore.

The interactive website will also feature new material which Rowling says she has been "hoarding for years".

"This is such a great way to give something back to the fans who made Harry Potter such a huge success," the author said.

The Harry Potter novels have sold more than 450 million copies through Bloomsbury in Britain, and Scholastic in the United States.

However the e-books - which will be available in several languages - will be published through Rowling's Pottermore Publishing, rather than her print publishers which do not own the digital rights.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13889578

These were fantastic as audiobooks.

[krispos42]

1. They weren't already?

Hmph.

[MaineDem]

2. I heard them all as audiobooks

I don't know if they were available as e-books.

[krispos42]

3. It seems the most logical thing to do

The printers already have the book set up to print, and it's all computerized. They just have to copy it into a format the Kindles and Nooks can read and charge money for it.


Audio books take work... voice actor, director, soundman, etc.

[Riftaxe]

4. Jim Dale did an amazing job

on the audio version.

[MaineDem]

9. One of the best narrators I've listen to

Fantastic!

[Riftaxe]

12. He is such a great one that

I feel no remorse in pluggin' his web site

http://www.jim-dale.com/">Jim Dale

Audio acting has to be much harder the A/V I am amazed at how good he is!!

[customerserviceguy]

5. Get used to it

Ten years from now, publishing dead-tree books will be about as obsolete as dial-up networking.

[SheilaT]

6. Gosh. Just think of the many millions of people

who still won't be owning an e-book. I guess they may as well not bother to learn to read.

I was just reading today a review of the latest version of the e-books. I guess you'll be expected to buy a new one every couple of years.

[customerserviceguy]

7. Yes, dead-tree books will still exist ten years from now

Just like you can find cassette tapes at garage sales and such.

Will ebooks be subject to exploitation by greedy marketers? Sure, what isn't? But those sellers who treat their public with noticable respect might just survive and prosper.

It takes a lot of expensive energy to make and distribute dead-tree books. Ebooks eliminate that, and as publishers finally realize that they cannot sell an ebook for anywhere near the price they sold a dead-tree book for, they will dominate.

[SheilaT]

8. I'm reminded a little bit

of how in the 1970's there were predictions that we'd be a totally cash-free society by 1980, or surely by 1990 at the latest. I don't know about you, but I still use cash on a daily basis.

Since e-books are, as you point out, incredibly cheap to produce, most of them really are incredibly expensive to purchase. Plus, you can't share an e-book the way you can a paper one. Plus, we're already noticing that every couple of years you're expected to upgrade your reader. It makes the e-books even more expensive than paper books, over the short and medium run, and probably even over the long run. Just wait. In not very many years there will be a new must-have e-reader that will NOT allow you to read books in the old format, sort of like the way the old computer games no longer work on a new computer or (and I have this problem) my two computers are old enough that new games don't work on them.

And even all of these concerns are only addressing those well-off enough to afford to buy an e-reader in the first place. As the economy continues to erode, they will become out of reach for more and more people.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Yes, predictions of a cash-free society were overly optimistic

But I usually only withdraw about forty dollars a week from my bank's ATM around the corner every Friday, about four percent of my gross pay. The rest, I do with credit cards and online payments. Your mileage may vary, but it really is possible to live a totally cash-free existence these days. In my case, I like to leave my bartenders cash tips along with the minimal ones I toss on my credit cards. Other than that, I really get along fine without paper money, although it is handy to have when a co-worker's kid's school is selling candy bars to raise funds.

Yes, ebooks are not cheap. Neither were music CD's 25 years ago. As far as sharing books, perhaps you just don't have the requisite geek skills. Yes, readers get upgraded, any rapidly emerging technology goes through that phase, but each generation of e-readers will be cheaper and cheaper. I remember my first pocket calculator costing $100, and that was in 1974 dollars. Today, you can buy them at the dollar store, and that's a 2011 dollar.

Your comments about compatibility remain to be seen as to whether or not they will come true. I'm 90% certain that somebody will come up with cheap or free software that changes an old format ebook to a new one, just the way there are conversion programs for the various photography formats that are nominally incompatible.

Your comments about affording an e-reader are about to become obsolete. In five years, they will be relatively dirt cheap. And no, I don't have one now, I'm waiting for them to hit the under-$50 mark, that should happen in about two years.

[SheilaT]

11. There are those for whom even the

$50.00 will be more than they can spare from the budget.

I also tend to like to read in the bathtub, and I'm not about to risk electronics there. Oh and I also read in the shower sometimes.

"Real" books are going to take a very, very long time to be obsolete.

[customerserviceguy]

13. Yes, $50 is a good deal of money for a lot of people

Perhaps they will find older machines for five bucks or so at the Goodwill. And the energy in an ebook reader isn't going to kill you in the bathtub, slippery fingers would just be fatal to the device.

Yes, books will exist for a long time. We still have scrolls from antiquity, but other than a few religions that use them, they're not an everyday thing. Rest assured that you will have plenty of books to soak in the tub for the rest of your life, they just might not be anything published recently.