In a major announcement, Google has said that it will make available the Harry Potter e-books on its platform as well.
Before this, the e-books of the Harry Potter series were available through Pottermore, the website of the book’s author, JK Rowling.
According to a TechCrunch report , Amazon is also working closely with the author to bring the Harry Potter books to the Kindle platform.
Kindle sells books with DRM (digital rights management) whereas the Pottermore site sells their e-books in the DRM free format. Amazon, however, says the decision rests on the publishers and that they are open to the idea of selling books without DRM. For the users, absence of DRM means they can read these books on pretty much any platform of their choice, including iPhone and iPads.
Users will still have to buy the books from Pottermore itself, but they will have the choice of choosing their e-book platform – Google Books or Amazon Kindle. Google is slightly ahead in this race, since Pottermore would be using Google Checkout as the preferred third party payment platform for accepting payments.
On the development, a Google blog says, “Pottermore will be the exclusive place to buy Harry Potter e-books and digital audiobooks. You’ll be able to buy e-books from the Pottermore Shop, push them to your Google Books library and store them alongside your other Google eBooks. Your other Google e-Books may be purchased from any of more than 250 independent booksellers or from Google directly.”