It took J.K. Rowling a while but she has finally unveiled the future of her Harry Potter ebooks. Last week’s announcement of Pottermore saw the arrival of her new online portal with the exclusive sales rights to her digital works, and it featured two important publishing elements: a direct sales model and no DRM to be seen.

Harry Potter e-books make use of digital watermarking.  Every copy sold is traceable to its origin of sale and customer, allowing the user free choice as to how they use their product while maintaining the means to identify any piracy that may occurr.

Rowling realized the popularity of her Potter franchise and knows she can make good use of this to grow the direct relationship with her readers.  With the advent of Pottermore, Rowling has no use for the big names in the ebook retail space.  Why settle for a cut of the royalty or a top-line on sales on a product for which she owns the complete digital rights, when she can keep it all?

"Pottermore has responded to retailers’ frustrations over being unable to sell the Harry Potter e-books, saying the idea was to “ensure ease of availability across all reading devices”.

Retailers hit out at J K Rowling’s decision to sell the Harry Potter e-books directly through her Pottermore website, which will launch in October. A Pottermore spokesperson said: “Pottermore is designed to encourage the reading and re-reading of the Harry Potter books in all formats and editions, both print and digital, to both existing and new generations of readers. We think this will have a positive effect on those selling physical books as well as on sales of digital ones.”

He added: “The decision to make e-books exclusive to the site was to ensure ease of availability across all reading devices and to the widest possible audience and also to support the ultimate intention of the site to be an online reading experience.”

Excerpt, Full article in The Bookseller.

Rowling had the good fortune that there were no digital rights signed over when she made the publishing deal with Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. or they would have acquired both the print and ebook rights to the books.  Rowling not only has full control and ownership, but has said she offered to give both her UK and US publishers a share in the sales.

Pottermore is being developed in partnership with Sony. Warner Brothers owns the Harry Potter film and game rights.  This leaves an open ended digital sales stream where no advantage can be had by any one party by locking users into a specific reading device or hardware requirement, or create a platform specific game or other form of content limiting the use of the Harry Potter digital franchise.

The University of California Libraries released the results of a survey about eBook usage of the of the UC academic community. The survey was launched in October 2010, and measured:

• Respondents’ general preference for print books as compared to e-books.
• How respondents interact with e-books and barriers to e-book adoption and use.
• How users of Springer e-books discover their availability.
• Satisfaction level with Springer content and features, including the “MyCopy” service.

Some findings of this survey include:

• When asked about the use of e-books in their academic work, 58% of survey respondents reported using e-books; 38% reported not using e-books; and 4% were not sure of their e-book usage. Of those reporting not using e-books, the majority report utilizing digital resources, such as e-journals.
• Of the survey respondents who indicated a preference (n=2410), 49% prefer print books, 34% prefer e-books, and 17% had no preference or described a preference that is usage-dependent.
• Postdoctoral researchers reported the highest preference for e-books over print books (49%), followed by graduate students (35%), faculty and lecturers (33%), and undergraduate students (27%).
• Respondents in business and law reported the highest preference for e-books (54%), followed by life and health sciences (44%), physical sciences and engineering (32%), social sciences (31%), and arts and humanities (17%).
• The ability to search within and across e-book content is identified as the primary advantage of e-books, regardless of whether a respondent prefers print book or e-books.
• Annotating and highlighting within the e-book environment is perceived as vital to the majority of respondents who use academic e-books. For those indicating a preference for print books, dissatisfaction with e-book annotation tools is frequently mentioned as a stumbling block to e-book adoption.
• The ability to download the entire e-book to a device for later use is a highly valued feature. Respondents expressed frustration with those e-book vendors that restrict downloading or printing to chapters or other pre-defined sections.
• A surprising 41% of respondents rate the option to purchase a “print-on-demand” copy of an e-book as an important feature, implying that utilization of the service should witness an upward trend.

On Tuesday 21 June, the British Library announced a partnership with Google. Together, they plan to digitize and release about 250 000 old and public domain books that are currently in the British Library's collection.

This project will include books from 1700 to 1870 - the period that saw the French and Industrial Revolutions, The Battle of Trafalgar and the Crimean War, the invention of rail travel and of the telegraph, the beginning of UK income tax, and the end of slavery. This will amount to a total of 40 million pages of content that will be converted, and will include material in a variety of major European languages. The focus will be on material that is not yet freely available in digital format.

According to Dame Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive of the British Library,

“In the nineteenth century it was an ambition of our predecessors to give everybody access to as much of the world’s information as possible, to ensure that knowledge was not restricted to those who could afford private libraries. The way of doing it then was to buy books from the entire world and to make them available in Reading Rooms."

"We are delighted to be partnering with Google on this project and through this partnership believe that we are building on this proud tradition of giving access to anyone, anywhere and at any time. Our aim is to provide perpetual access to this historical material, and we hope that our collections coupled with Google’s know-how will enable us to achieve this aim.”

The first works to be digitized will include feminist pamphlets about Queen Marie-Antoinette (1791), the invention of the first combustion engine-driven submarine (1858), and an account of a stuffed Hippopotamus owned by the Prince of Orange (1775).

After being digitized, these books will be made available for free via Google's eBookstore. A digital copy of each book will also be archived by the British Library.

According to a new survey by the Association of American University Presses, eBooks are not making a very big dent in the higher education market. They report that for the majority of university presses, eBook Sales or licenses account for fewer than 3% of total revenue.

Still, the survey showed that every press is perusing at least two digital publishing strategies. And despite concerns about the risk of falling print sales, there is a lot of optimism. Many presses have reported rises in eBook sales since the data for the survey was collected, with significant jumps in the first part of 2011.