J.K. Rowling’s enormously successful Harry Potter series is about an incompetent orphan who lucks his way through a series of magical adventures despite being essentially inept. Tens of millions of people — myself included! — have enjoyed them over the course of the last decade, but only in dead tree form. Bizarrely, Harry Potter has never officially come to e-books up until now.
Of course, no longer. As one last magical trick, Harry Potter has made the jump to a number of e-book stores, including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google and Sony. The only company left out? Apple’s iBookstore.
Although Apple hasn’t commented on the matter yet it appears that Apple was not able to come to terms with J.K. Rowling on selling the Harry Potter series in the iBookstore. And it’s easy to see why.
In publishing the Harry Potter series in e-book form, J.K. Rowling wanted to make sure she walked away with the biggest piece of the pie. Therefore, she is selling the Harry Potter e-books directly from her website, PotterMore, and the deals she has struck with the likes of Google, Amazon, et al. These deals allow J.K. Rowling to sell the Harry Potter books from her own site, keep most of the money, but have them delivered like normal e-books in third-parties’ e-reading apps.
Pretty clever, but of course, Apple wasn’t going to have any of it: they want their 30% cut, end of story, and they’d say no to Voldemort himself if he came asking.
Of course, if you can’t live without Harry Potter on your device, you can still buy it through the likes of Amazon, or directly through Pottermore, and then load it up in iBooks manually through your computer.
