Harry Potter eBooks in German Now Available on Pottermore
The book series is one of the most successful in recent history and is celebrating its 15th birthday this year. We’re talking about Harry Potter. The first volume appeared in 1997—ten years later, the last one. The series has accompanied many children, teenagers, young adults, and adults for a substantial period, making the farewell after so many years understandably difficult.
However, it’s not exactly a total end, as Pottermore, an interactive website, recently opened its doors, allowing fans to replay the entire story themselves and become part of a larger community.
Along with the interactive storytelling part, digital versions of the Harry Potter books are exclusively sold in the affiliated shop. Potter author J.K. Rowling retained the digital rights to the popular book series, enabling her to bring the eBooks to the market independently of publishers. Even Amazon—one of the largest Harry Potter retailers worldwide—has to refer customers to the Pottermore homepage for eBook sales. No other eBook has that requirement.
In addition to the English-language books, more languages have been added: German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese are now also available.
Regrettably, with the introduction of the translations, the prices have also increased. From an original 5.97 euros or 8.36 euros to 7.99 or 9.99 euros. This makes the eBooks hardly cheaper than their paper versions. However, there is a small consolation as you don’t have to deal with an annoying copy protection: The eBooks on Pottermore are sold without hard DRM and instead are marked with a digital watermark (soft DRM), which doesn’t complicate usage.
Success Without Hard DRM
Pottermore was one of the most prominent pioneers in using digital watermarks. Until then, many bestselling authors and well-known publishers used hard copy protection to safeguard their works against unauthorized sharing (which is notoriously impossible and only hinders honest buyers—but that’s another story).
Despite the relatively moderate copy protection, the launch of the Harry Potter platform was a major success, and sales were enormous. It was the long-desired, unmistakable success many DRM critics had hoped for, clearly demonstrating: Book lovers buy good eBooks even without hard DRM.
This success eventually went so far that illegally available Harry Potter eBooks on file-sharing platforms were soon removed, as many operators wanted to honor the customer-friendliness.
Sony Exits
An interesting side note: Pottermore started with Sony as a commercial partner. The plan was initially to stock Sony eReaders exclusively with various Harry Potter eBooks to boost sales. Various bundle offers were briefly introduced. Ultimately, however, the corresponding end products never materialized, so there were no corresponding sales in Germany (and as far as we know, nowhere else either).
The reason: Sony was already in a severe financial crisis at the time, and the eBook sector didn’t seem to have much relevance for the company’s restructuring. Eventually, Sony’s final exit from the eBook business followed, ending the Pottermore partnership, so now there are no prominently placed references to the Japanese company on the homepage anymore.
Only a few eReader images remain as relics of this collaboration, such as the Sony PRS-600.
Thanks to Johannes and Kwisatz Haderach for the information!
