If you were hoping to buy the coveted e-book versions of J.K. Rowlings ‘Harry Potter’ books, then you may have to wait a little longer. According to ‘Inside Pottermore’, the official blog of the Pottermore site, the e-books won’t be available until the first half of the next year.
The decision to not open the Pottermore Shop where the books would be sold was made to allow the site to focus on their first priority: “opening Pottermore to as many people as possible and making the experience as good as it can be.” Because of this, the e-books and digital audio books will not be available until then.
Originally, the ‘Pottermore’ site was to be available to the public as of the beginning of October. But due to the phenomenal response and usage from its beta users, the site has had to really limit the amount of people who have originally gained early beta entrance in order to prevent the site from going down and to have time to work out the kinks. Because of this, ‘Pottermore’ has decided to delay the public opening until the end of October and had just sent out their last Welcome letter to the 1 millionth beta user to gain entry a few days ago. So, everyone who successfully registered for early entrance should now be able to get in and give their input.
At the end of October, registration will be open to everyone but the actual access to the ‘Pottermore’ site will occur in stages so it could be “weeks or months, depending on demand” before you can actually get in. According to ‘Inside Pottermore’, the site is undergoing a number of enhancements and simplifications…in order to make the site smoother and more enjoyable.”
So basically it sounds like the site was not expecting the deluge of visits to their sites and needs to find a way to get it working without it slowing down the play or even crashing the server once it goes public. With over 550 million views before all 1 million beta testers were even able to access the site, ‘Pottermore’ already has the makings of an interactive site unparalleled to any other. Considering the blog is stating the e-books won’t be available until the first half of 2012 since they are focusing more on getting the site up, I wouldn’t be surprised if the books weren’t available until the end of the first half of the year.
So what do you think of this decision? Do you really think having the books on an e-reader is a must have or are you just as happy having the hard copy versions?
