It didn't take a Hogwarts magician to know this day would eventually come.
The bookstore feature of J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website went live Tuesday, enabling English-language readers to buy the digital editions of all seven Harry Potter novels—and the audiobook editions—from anywhere in the world. Editions in French, Italian, German and Spanish will be the next wave.
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Associated Press
From left, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Daniel Radcliffe are shown in a scene from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2." The Harry Potter books are now available in digital editions on author J.K. Rowling's website.
The digital books are accessible on dedicated e-readers, tablets, personal computers and mobile phones. The first three Harry Potter titles are priced at $7.99 each, while the remaining four titles, which are longer in length, cost $9.99 each. Enhanced editions that may have video and other features will eventually follow. The bookstore's website is shop.pottermore.com.
Ms. Rowling's books have sold an estimated 450 million physical copies and been translated into more than 70 languages. But because the author retained the digital rights to her works when she signed her publishing contracts, e-book editions weren't yet available.
Last June, Ms. Rowling announced that she was launching Pottermore as a site for Harry Potter fans to gather online, find new material—and eventually buy her e-books. The retail side of the site initially was planned to launch last October, but it took Pottermore longer than expected to ensure the site could handle the expected volume of orders. In November, a veteran digital publishing executive, Charlie Redmayne, was brought in to get the site on track. The content side of the site, which is still in beta-testing, is expected to go live in early April.
By selling the e-books on her own site, Ms. Rowling will keep most of the revenue, rather than sharing much of it with her publishers as is usually the case. Several major retailers will have the opportunity to participate. Mr. Redmayne said that Harry Potter fans will be able to buy the digital books via links on bookstores operated by Sony Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Barnes & Noble Inc. and Google Inc. In those cases, the digital editions will be downloaded directly to the Sony Reader, Kindle, the Nook and Google Play from the Pottermore site. The retailers will get a cut of the sales.
Pottermore hasn't struck a similar deal with Apple Inc., said Mr. Redmayne, which means that its books won't appear within Apple's iBookstore. Apple device owners will be able to access the books through other retailer apps. An Apple spokesperson declined comment.
Mr. Redmayne said that there won't be a large marketing campaign to kick off the new Pottermore bookstore because he expects demand for the titles will be significant. He declined to give sales projections. Mr. Redmayne added that the market will include kids ages eight to 11 who haven't yet tried the books, as well as teens and older readers.
Ms. Rowling's digital titles are going on sale just at a time when another series initially aimed at young readers, Suzanne Collins's the "Hunger Games" trilogy, is dominating e-book sales. The movie version of "The Hunger Games," the first book in the trilogy, took in $155 million over the weekend in North America.
E-book sales grew 117% to $970 million in 2011 compared with 2010, according to the Association of American Publishers' monthly net sales reports which reflect data from 77 publishers.
Write to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com
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