M+E Daily

by Terence Keegan

Amazon is adding another deal-sweetener to its Kindle platform and Prime premium subscription service: free access to the Harry Potter eBook series.

Beginning June 19, Kindle owners who subscribe to the $79/year Prime service will be able to “borrow” each of the seven Harry Potter titles from Amazon’s “Lending Library.” The eBook borrowing service allows Kindle owners to access up to one book a month for free, “with no due dates,” from a 145,000-title catalog that also includes best-sellers such as Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games.”

The Harry Potter series only became available in digital form on March 27, with the opening of author J.K. Rowling’s own Pottermore website. The site, which acts as the exclusive digital retailer of the Potter titles, reportedly sold £3 million (approximately $4.8 million) worth of eBooks in its first 30 days of operation (via The Bookseller).

Terms of the exclusive licensing deal between Pottermore and Amazon for the Harry Potter eBook lending rights have not been disclosed. But the license gives Amazon a high-profile marketing edge over its eBook retail rivals, including Apple and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

In addition, the timing of Amazon’s announcement means that Pottermore gave itself a six-week marketing window to capture sales.

Site chief executive Charlie Redmayne had told The Bookseller that Pottermore’s first-month performance dispelled concerns over piracy (which declined, even though the Potter eBooks are DRM-free) and cannibalization of print book sales (which was a non-issue, as print sales actually increased). Once Amazon’s lending program kicks in, the question for Redmayne will be whether/how Prime access will affect Pottermore’s business.

Any discussion of sales windows for eBooks is bound to be different from how movie studios talk about managing the impact of Redbox rental kiosks on DVD and Blu-ray sales. For starters, Amazon may be a big fish in eBooks, but the number of Kindle owners who also subscribe to Prime (which also offers a growing selection of free streaming video rentals) is likely to be relatively small at this point.

In any event, Redmayne is confident about the appeal of Pottermore’s sell-through model to consumers. “We have demonstrated that if you make these books available in the way that people want them, and on a platform that is accessible to them, and at a price they are happy with, then generally people will chose to buy them,” he told The Bookseller on May 4.