A new piece on PaidContent.org points out that, because the Harry Potter eBooks are housed exclusively within the Pottermore Shop, we’ll never see them on eBook bestseller lists.
The Potter eBooks went on sale for the first time last Tuesday. Though they are available for devices like Amazon’s Kindle, you must head into the Pottermore Shop to make your purchase. And that means stats aren’t logged on other eBook sites.
Since Pottermore is mum on actual sales numbers — and the New York Times and USA Today aren’t yet tracking the Harry Potter e-books, though future lists should account for them — we have to resort to other tactics. Normally, that would mean checking the bestseller lists at retailers like the Amazon Kindle Store and Barnes & Noble Nook store. But here’s a wrinkle: As you may recall, the Harry Potter e-books aren’t being sold directly through those stores. Rather, they’re only sold directly through Pottermore’s site. Consumers can then link their Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader or Google accounts to Pottermore to read the books on their e-readers.
That means Harry Potter e-books won’t appear on retailers’ bestseller lists. Barnes & Noble confirmed the Harry Potter e-books won’t show up on the Nook bestseller list, no matter how well they are actually selling. The same appears to be true at Amazon, Google and Sony (I’ve asked the companies for comment). At all of those sites, Harry Potter e-books don’t appear on the top-100 besteller lists.
It would be neat to see Harry Potter dominating the bestseller lists once again and interesting if they were to outsell The Hunger Games trilogy (which are currently doing very well).
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