The Potter magic is rubbing on Google and the world of Hogwarts will soon be accessible to all muggles on the the Google ebooks platform.
On July 20, author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling entered into a deal with Google to launch the Harry Potter series on Google ebooks. The bestseller series will be released on Pottermore.com, a Rowling website, in October and will be available in the United States via the Google eBooks platform.
When customers buy the Harry Potter ebooks from Pottermore.com, they will be able to to keep it in their Google’s online library in the cloud or store it on any other e-reading platform of their choice.
Google, however, will not be allowed to sell the Harry Potter e-books or audio-books on its own site.
The two sides also agreed to make Google Checkout the preferred third-party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com. A Google blog post said, “When you visit the Pottermore shop you will be able to pay for your purchase using Google Checkout in addition to using a debit or credit card.” This is a huge step for Google as they’ve out-dealt both PayPal and Amazon.
The ebook can be read on most devices with a modern browser, through Google apps for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets, and on more than 80 e-readers.
In addition, for global video broadcasts, the Pottermore team plans to use Google-owned YouTube, as they did in June when Rowling announced Pottermore.com.
Have a peek at Rowling on YouTube below:
{iframe width=”560″ height=”349″ align=”top”}http://www.youtube.com/embed/i5DOKOt7ZF4{/iframe}
Some reports seem to have taken this to mean that the Potter and his pals won’t be making their way to Amazon’s Kindle. A TechCrunch blog says, “ Fortunately, that isn’t the case. We’ve received word from an Amazon spokesperson that the company is “working closely with Pottermore to make sure Kindle customers will be able to buy and read J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.”
This is significant because even before the Rowling-Google deal, Potter fans were eager to have him on Kindle. A small hitch here seems to be that Pottermore books will be in a DRM free format while Amazon sells its books with DRM, though the online book seller says they actually sell a lot of Kindle books without DRM and that the decision lies with the publisher.
A lot is in store for Potter witchcraft and wizardry fans. Apart from ebooks and audioversions of the novels, Pottemore.com will be selling additional content including background details and settings. The website will be launched on July 31 for the first one million fans to complete their registration on the website on that day, and on October 1 for everyone else.
J.K.Rowling has sold over 450 million copies of her seven-part Harry Potter series and the eight films based on those books have grossed over $ 6 billion world-wide, it remains to be seen whether the billionaire author, The Times estimates the Harry Potter brand value at $ 15 billion, will be able to achieve similar figures in the digital world.