Pottermore Sales Surpass £1 Million in 3 Days

In What's the Buzz by Hannah Johnson

By Hannah Johnson

So it looks like waiting to sell your e-books until your fans are in a frenzy to have them was a good strategy for the Harry Potter empire. JK Rowling decided not to grant the digital book rights to her publishers and instead sell the e-book versions through a dedicated Harry Potter website, Pottermore.

Amazon sends buyers to Pottermore website to purchase Harry Potter e-books

The e-books went on sale just three days ago, and sales have already broken the £1 million mark, according to Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne, who was interviewed by The Bookseller‘s Philip Jones on a radio show called “The Naked Book” yesterday.

Laura Hazard Owen at PaidContent calculated, based on the price of the e-books, that unit sales are upwards of 164,000. Not bad for three days.

Amazon and Barnes & Noble are also “selling” Harry Potter e-books in so far as the books are listed on their websites, but the buy links take customers back to Pottermore. It’s interesting that Amazon, usually the playground bully, has agreed to hand over customers and sales to a third-party website. Doubful that any other authors have that kind of clout with Amazon. Given the amount of direct and search engine traffic that Amazon and Barnes & Noble receive, this looks like a win-win situation for Rowling and Pottermore.

About the Author

Hannah Johnson

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Hannah Johnson is the publisher of international book industry magazine Publishing Perspectives, which provides daily information and news about book markets around the world. In addition to building partnerships with international cultural and trade organizations, she works with the Frankfurt Book Fair to organize and support a number of its overseas initiatives. Hannah has also worked as the managing editor for an online media company, The Hooch Life, focused on craft distillers and cocktail experts. Prior to that, she worked as a project manager for the Frankfurt Book Fair’s New York office, managing various business and marketing activities.