Harry Potter eBooks Likely to Launch in Early April
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Yesterday there was an announcement on the Pottermore Insider website that says Pottermore.com will open to everyone in early April.
They go on to explain the reason for the delay was because they needed to make sure the website could handle the gazillions of Harry Potter fans that are going to be using it all at once.
The news doesn’t give any specifics on the release of the Harry Potter ebooks—it doesn’t even mention ebooks, in fact—but with OverDrive already announcing their exclusive deal to distribute Harry Potter ebooks to schools and libraries—that’s expected to happen in April too—it’s fairly safe to assume Harry Potter ebooks will be available when Pottermore.com launches since it is supposed to be the exclusive retailer of said ebooks.
Pottermore first went online last July. Soon after it launched they began testing the site with one million Beta users. The site offers a “unique online reading experience” built around the Harry Potter books. J.K. Rowling even wrote an additional 18,000 words of new material for Pottermore. Among other things, visitors of the site can play games, watch movie clips, and of course shop for Harry Potter products, including ebooks.
OverDrive has already mentioned carrying Harry Potter ebooks in more than 20 languages, with formats compatible with ePub-supporting ebook readers, the Kindle, PC and Mac computers, Android devices, Blackberry, and Apple iPad and iPhone. There’s no reason to expect Pottermore to do it any differently.
How does someone “disrubute” an ebook?
And yes, ebooks are coming in April; I confirmed it with Pottermore.
Of all the people to bust my balls about a typo, I didn’t expect it to be you. I often wonder if you have a spellchecker at all :). Mine is apparently off duty today…
No iPad 3 (oh I’m sorry, “the new iPad”) post?
@Andrew I was going to but got sidetracked with ME3. I figured I’d be the one tech site on the planet not to do an iPad 3 post.
But I ended up ordering one so I figured I’d wait until next week to post some hands-on reviews.
I’d care more about my errors except that no one ever says anything.
And don’t you know that a post new iPad is obligatory? I used a lorem ipsum generator to write mine.
http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2012/03/08/obligatory-new-ipad-post-humor/
That was literally the most unique and interesting iPad 3 article of the week.
To me, the whole iPad launch was a huge bomb. The rumors had everything pegged so there wasn’t any surprises.
Funny, I already have them as ebooks. And in hard copy.
barn doors. horses. much too late.
I appreciate your expertise and insight. Thanks for the iPad commentary.
The public library e-book lending powered by Overdrive is just showing .epub and .mp3 formats available for the Harry Potter titles. I don’t know how other devices are going to be supported that don’t handle these formats natively.
They will be supported by the OverDrive app for iDevices, Blackberry, etc. And then ADE for ePub devices. The Kindle will get theirs too, some libraries are showing. I guess Kindles are for US-only, though, according to the press release from OverDrive.
Nathan, that’s interesting since I belong to the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) and they don’t show the Kindle format being available for waiting lists. LAPL does have Kindle format available, but only for some books, but not all books. I’m finding it unusual since the original press release was Overdrive was going to support the Kindle platform, but it’s turning out to be less than 100 percent support. It doesn’t matter to me since I’m not an Amazon reader Fanboy.
Nathan,
I was using your root method for my Nook Simple Touch and I think I may have removed the SD card prematurely.. Now, all I get is the nook by Barnes and Noble screen that flashes every few seconds like it’s trying to load. If I hold the power button down for 30 seconds, I get the Read Forever screen, then back to the flashing nook screen.
Is there any help you can give me? Any ideas??
PJ
An update. I’m able to get the Simple Touch to allow me to do a factory reset, goes through the correct steps for it, opens the Noon Read Forever screen, switches to the Nook screen with the 5 circles, runs maybe a minute on that and then starts the flashing again.
I’m also able to install my SD card with Touchnooter installed and it recognizes it, having the three lines of instruction for the TouchNooter program on the screen.
Sorry but you’d be better off posting your q’s at XDA. I’m not an Android developer so I’m not going to be able to give any advice other than using the restore method to go back to stock and start over again.