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Harry Potter and the Mysterious eBookstore

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Huge news today as J.K. Rowling finally released eBooks for the Harry Potter novels. They have been noticeably absent from the market -- just as the Beatles were from CDs and the iTunes back in the day. But now if you go to the Pottermore website you can purchase and download them. What is more you can do so for any eReader including Amazon Kindle, Sony products and Apple's iBooks.

There is, however, mystery all around when you visit the site. First of all, you can only purchase the books from the Pottermore site. This is really unusual. On Amazon's page they actually push you there. There is no other Kindle book sold in this way. It is a big deal. Second, how often can you download a book? Apparently, 8 times. But that is 8 times on any device. So if you have a Kindle and your kid has an iPad you only have to buy the book once. This is a cross-platform purchase.

But then there is the pricing. For the US version, the cost is $7.99 for the first three books, $9.99 for the rest and $57.54 for the lot. For the UK version, the same prices are 4.99, 6.99 and 38.64 pounds. The UK versions are more expensive. But what is more interesting is the language choice. Now you ask: what do you mean, surely you want English. Well, there are two versions of Harry Potter: the original English versions and the US English versions and they are different. In the UK, it is the Philosopher's Stone. In the US, it is the Sorcerer's Stone. Coming, as we do from Australia, I wanted to buy the UK version. To my delight, it listed them and, in fact, the UK version looked cheaper. But then I went to purchase and was told that that version was not available in your country.

Why not? Sure, when they were in print I can imagine why you can't make two versions available. But what is the problem with eBooks? This is strange and mysterious behavior indeed.

And there is one more mystery, the digital rights management. Actually, I'm not sure there is any but there are some legal terms:

eBooks purchased from the Pottermore Shop can be downloaded for your personal use up to eight times, at no additional cost. If you want to share your Harry Potter eBook with your own children, that's absolutely fine with us too, so long as they are under 18. Actually, we'd encourage it! However, once they are over 18, they will need to buy their own copy.

You might want to download a copy to your laptop, your tablet, and your child's eReader - whatever the combination - you have eight available downloads per book. There's no time limit to use up your downloads, so if you lose your device or close an account with one of our partners, come back at any time to take another copy.

Eight downloads will normally be plenty, so you won't need to buy again. However, if you do download a book more than eight times, or want to buy it as a gift, you will need to purchase it again. For more details on downloads and how they can be used, please see our Terms & Conditions.

The terms and conditions don't appear to help much. I think what this means is that you can download them 8 times and share books with children on an honor system as there is no way of policing this. This is not too dissimilar from other services that allow multiple downloads. But it is different from a Kindle that allows you to download another copy if you lose or sell your device. So if your kids buy one of these and then want to give it to their children in 30 years time, no dice. Again, that is typical but one wonders why given all of the trouble Rowling went to in order to build her own site why she didn't push to make something a little more time independent.

In sum, there is a touch of mystery in this new development. Why is there a language difference? Why is there different international pricing? And how precisely as Rowling managed to free herself from current eBookstore rules? Actually, that isn't that much of a mystery (she has bargaining power and uses it) but it does suggest that similar opportunities might arise for other authors.