With the launch of the store at Pottermore.com, it’s now possible to get digital versions of all seven Harry Potter novels.
I own all of the audiobooks twice over, and several of the printed books, but the eBooks represent something new: the chance to read the British version of the novels. Alas, due to insanely complicated—and stupid—international publication rights and restrictions, and my credit card’s USA billing address, the Pottermore.com store did not want to allow me to buy the UK version of the books.
Here’s how I bought them anyway. (You can do the same for the audiobooks, too.)
The basic trick is that I bought a gift for a “friend” who lives in the UK. Buying a gift allows (or in theory requires) you to purchase the edition appropriate for the gift recipient, rather than restricting you to the edition you are allowed to buy. And since your “friend” is redeeming a gift credit, they don’t need to enter a billing address that gets verified (or not) by a credit card transaction.
The only “tricky” part is that you need to have two email addresses, one for you (the buyer) and one for your “friend” (the gift recipient). Many people have a home and a work email, but as long as you have one, it’s not hard to get a second on one of the different webmail services (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.).
The full walk-through of the process is pretty damn tedious, you have to create Pottermore.com accounts for both you and your “friend”, but in the end I turned my $62 American dollars into all seven British edition eBooks, and they work great on my iPad (and well enough on my iPhone). I’m very much looking forward to re-reading the books again, with the Philosopher’s Stone and “colours” and “chips” (fries) and “biscuits” (cookies) and “snogging” (PDA) and all the rest of the wonderful English language in which the books were originally written.
If you’ve wanted to listen to the magnificent Stephen Fry narrated versions of the books, but balked at the £240 price plus international shipping charges from Amazon.com UK, this is your opportunity to save quite a bit of money. To say nothing of instant gratification!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
You’re a genius! Got my UK edition Harry Potter books using your method and it worked like a charm! Thanks for ousting this!
Yes!!! Thanks sooooo much. I just gifted myself the UK set, and I’m thrilled. It worked just like you outlined, but I actually didn’t have to make a second account as the gift receiver (did use a second email). I’m so glad I found your comments. I was so close to settling, as I’ve been wanting the electronic editions for so long. Awesome!
Do you know where I can find the UK Chapter and sub chapter names (tracks) for the UK audio books? There are two different sets….one with text from story as chapter names and one with numbers and letters, ex: 10A, 10B,….
@Coco: I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Do you just want the names of the chapters, the text used for the chapter headings in the books? Or are you looking for the tracks themselves? You can purchase the audiobooks from Pottermore easily enough, as described in this post. The plain text of the chapter titles, I’m sure those are available via google, and maybe even just by visiting Amazon.com and looking up each book…
I found a nice deluxe cloth-bound hardcover set of the first 4 Potter books at an Amazon zShop back when Goblet of Fire was the newest edition. I wanted a UK copy of the first book as the US edition has the title (and name of the artifact) wrong. Imagine my surprise fo find further text alterations in the Scholastic editions! So I continued to preorder my copies directly from Amazon.UK as they came out (which allowed my entire set to match!), and saved enough on the first four that the added expense balanced out nicely.
I don’t think the later books have changes (and the most radical are probably in the first book), but otherwise I highly recommend getting the “real” editions, hard copy or digital!