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 insanely 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!

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I’m still waiting for a deluxe boxed set of all the audiobooks, like the deluxe print books set, but if you’re just looking for a great deal on a complete set, packaging be damned, here’s all seven Harry Potter audiobooks at Amazon.com, at a 40% discount from full retail.

It’s still $275, but considering what they cost individually, if you want to own all seven, this is the way to go. The total running time is almost five days — at under $2.50/hour, it’s hard to imagine a better value for your entertainment dollar. Enjoy!

I’m a bit late to have stumbled across this information, but it would appear that the final novel in the Harry Potter series will not be coming to the iTunes Store:

HEARING HARRY
You may have the seen the avalanche of press coverage about the new “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” hardcover selling 8.3 million U.S. copies in its first 24 hours of release. […] More than 225,000 audiobook cassette or compact disc copies were [also] sold the first weekend. Those were the best two-day results in audiobook history, according to Random House. […] What’s not available is an iTunes download for your iPod. The first six Potter books are available through iTunes at prices ranging from $33 to $50. But a Random House spokeswoman said no iTunes date has been announced for “Deathly Hallows” and that she has no other information about download plans.

So if you’re still waiting, I suggest running out to Costco and getting the CD version, which had the lowest price I’ve seen by $10, and then buying a copy of Audiobook Builder to make importing it into iTunes more pleasurable. The two together will still cost less than Deathly Hallows would have cost through the iTunes Store, and you’ll be able to use Audiobook Builder on other books in the future.

The end is nigh. Preorder at Amazon.com today!

I missed the announcement last week of the title for the final book in the Harry Potter series and, since others might have also, thought I’d pass the news along:

I am so looking forward to this book. A month before it gets released I am going to re-listen to all six of the prior books, to have the whole series fresh in my head. It’s very exciting to know that it must be getting closer!