Those worried that Kindle owners might be left out in the cold by Google’s partnership with Pottermore for Harry Potter e-books no longer need worry. On PaidContent, Laura Hazard Owen reports that an Amazon spokesperson told them that Amazon is working with Pottermore, too.

Indeed, Owens reminds readers, Rowling said from the first mention of Pottermore’s e-book sales that she would be making the e-books available in as many DRM-free (albeit watermarked) formats as possible, so everyone would be able to read them in their own format of choice. Just because there have been a number of prominent exclusive e-publishing deals lately is no reason to assume they all will be.

Owen closes with speculation as to whether the Harry Potter e-book deal means Amazon is going to have to start supporting EPUB for the Kindle, rather than selling in the Kindle’s “exclusive format.” She writes, “The former seems more likely since there have also been rumors that the Harry Potter e-books will be DRM-less.”

Apparently she is unaware that it is perfectly feasible to publish DRM-free Kindle-compatible titles now, as it has been ever since before the Kindle launched. It’s called “MobiPocket”—and given how many other readers and applications still use or can use the format, it’s almost certain to be on offer along with every other format from Pottermore. And Amazon has, more recently, proven amenable to publishing DRM-free titles through its own store.

7 COMMENTS

  1. I was under the impression that Amazon could accept EPUB submissions of books, and it would convert them to AZW–especially in such a high profile case involving millions and millions of potential dollars.

  2. @Ben: Only publishers can submit EPUB files for conversion–regular customers aren’t allowed to. Here’s the error response Amazon sends via email when you try to send in an EPUB: The following document, sent at 05:38 PM on Fri, Jul 22, 2011 GMT could not be delivered to the Kindle you specified: * test.epub The Kindle Personal Document Service can convert and deliver the following types of documents: Microsoft Word (.doc) Rich Text Format (.rtf) HTML (.htm, .html) Text (.txt) documents Archived documents (zip , x-zip) and compressed archived documents Mobi book Images that are of type JPEGs (.jpg), GIFs (.gif), Bitmaps (.bmp), and PNG images (.png). Adobe PDF (.pdf) documents are delivered without conversion to Kindle DX, Second Generation and Latest Generation Kindles. The following document types are converted and delivered on an experimental basis: Microsoft Word 11 (.docx) Adobe PDF (.pdf) for First Generation Kindles

  3. J. K. Rowlings would be doing us a world of good if she could persuade Amazon to update the more recent Kindles so they can display non-DRMed ePubs. It’s becoming the standard way to distribute reflowable text and it’d be a lot easier to read on a Kindle than PDFs intended for 8.5×11 or A4 pages.

  4. Oh yes please..I have been searching for the series on kindle. I am reading almost constantly and unable to cart books along all the time so I use my Galaxy Tab to read kindle books. I have been searching and searching for certain series, only to discover the only way I could possibly find them for the kindle is via illegal sources, and I refuse to support those. (All tho, I admit I have been very tempted) hearing that the potter series will be made available made my day!

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.