Harry Potter e-books available, but only through Pottermore

It’s quite amazing that for the first time since the Harry Potter series began, in 1997, official e-book versions of all seven titles in the series are now available. Far more amazing however is where and how these e-books are being sold.

For the first time in the history of digital publishing a major author has forced the likes of Amazon and Barnes & Noble to operate on their terms. These and other retailers are referring readers to the Pottermore shop (the online business created to sell the e-books), rather than selling the e-books directly.

The customer can discover the Harry Potter e-books via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other major e-book retailers and is then re-directed to Pottermore to complete the purchasing of the e-book which can still be read on the customer’s device of choice (including the Kindle). It’s the first time Amazon has allowed a 3^rd party to own the customer relationship, while still allowing the e-book to be delivered to its device.

Mike Shatzkin – whose blog everyone interested in digital publishing should be following - has commented on how important Rowling and Pottermore's move is.

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Bilbary and Jelly Books

In the last week two new e-book related startups launched that look to change the buying, browsing and selling experience. Both Bilbary and Jellybooks have founders with UK-based book publishing backgrounds. Bilbary was founded by formed Waterstones MD Tim Coates and Jellybooks by Andrew Rhomberg, previously director of content acquisition at Txtr.

Bilbary focuses on selling e-books direct to readers, something which big trade publishers need a lot of help with. Currently in beta the site is available in the US and has over 300,000 e-books available for sales from non-agency publishers. Another 100,000 agency titles will be added shortly, and then the site will expand to titles form international publishers, self-published and out-of-print books. Future plans are to expand to an e-book rental model, which could help publishers compete with Amazon.

Currently Jellybooks main focus is on book discovery. The website is simple and displays rows of book covers in an easy to browse manner similar to a bookstore, except here all covers are ‘face out’. Customers are able to read the first 10 percent of the book, DRM-free, and can share the sample across various social networking platforms. The business model behind Jellybooks is a group buying heavily discounted model; this is not available yet but will be rolled out in a future release. At this stage Jellybooks has no intention of selling e-books directly at retail prices. Its focus is on being an e-book showroom where customers discover e-books and can buy them (via links on Jellybooks) at various retailers, except for the special group buying deals on Jellybooks.

E-Book Subscriptions are not Just a Thought

Skoobe.de, Germany’s first e-book subscription service launched in late February. A few months ago Skoobe (read it backwards) launched an iOS app providing reading samples of bestsellers published by more than 70 publishers (among them Droemer, DVA, Fischer, Goldmann, Heyne, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Lübbe, Luchterhand and Rowohlt). Customers are able to access about 2000 complete titles for a monthly fee of €9.99.

The customers can browse all titles, read extensive samples (without being a member) and may borrow a maximum of 5 e-books at once. When “returning” a title, another one can be picked. As an introductory offer, the first 10,000 users of the app can access an unlimited amount of new releases but from March 2013 users will be restricted to two new front-list e-books per month. The big attraction - compared to library subscriptions - is that there is no waiting list for popular titles: every e-book is available to every user at the same time. Furthermore the app allows readers to read without being connected to the internet for 30 days at a time.

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NBC to launch e-books division under NBC Publishing venture

NBC News is starting a new path into publishing, under the name of NBC Publishing.
They aim to produce electronic and print books under the NBC banner.

NBC Publishing’s strategy to production of books will be digital-first. Coming over from the television division of NBC are video producers and engineers who will create mixed content to enhance their books. NBC Publishing will still need to get their production processes in place, author the content, and edit and produce the actual books.

Creativity is closely tied to literature. Great writing is a completely different skill-set that NBC will have to work to improve when targeting a large reader audience.
Writers are needed, and a corporate culture capable of recognizing and promoting writing skills. NBC News has the advantage of large volumes of unseen broadcast footage that has never been aired. Beyond the archives are a much larger resource base provided by NBC News’s parent company NBC Universal.

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