Pottermore and Google team up to enable Harry Potter ebooks push to Google Books libraries
When JK Rowling's new website Pottermore opens its doors this Fall, we'll provide services to help fans make the most of their ebook purchasing experience. Pottermore and Google are teaming …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands in the middle of a fight over who owns the ebook customer relationship. GigaOM framed the stakes a month earlier in Harry Potter and the amazing exploding book industry, and Google has been positioning for exactly this since its 2007 e-books coup plotting through its 2010 pledge to bring books back to life via Book Search infrastructure.
By attaching itself to the biggest franchise in publishing at launch, Google gets what its own partner-program tools (launched in 2007) never bought it: a consumer-facing reason for readers to treat a Google Books library as their permanent shelf.
First-order effects
- When Pottermore opens this Fall, buyers of Harry Potter ebooks get a purchase path that pushes titles straight into their Google Books libraries rather than any retailer's store.
Second-order effects
- Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other ebook retailers face the loss of the highest-volume children's/YA franchise unless Rowling's shop grants them access, weakening the retailer-as-gatekeeper model for blockbuster backlists.
Third-order effects
- If a top-selling author can sell direct and deposit files into whichever cloud library she chooses, the industry drifts toward rights-holder storefronts with portable purchases — eroding the walled-garden economics that Kindle and Nook were built on.
The trend: Ebook distribution is shifting from retailer-owned stores toward author- and publisher-controlled shops whose purchases land in consumer-chosen cloud libraries.