HANDebooks

I was in a local store the other day and they had all of the current ebook readers lined up. There are quite a few. I was looking at them when I caught my eye that surprised me. The demo on the Sony reader was showing Harry Potter. I was a bit surprised, because to the best of my knowledge, it still hadn’t been released in ebook form. Looking at the demo that was running on the display model would have certainly led me to believe that if I bought that ebook reader, I would be able to read the Harry Potter books right away, because it was already on there it seemed. I went over to the reader at that time and tried to pull up the book. As soon as I did that, any reference to Harry Potter was gone. It was only shown in a couple of screens that flashed for just a few seconds in the demo.

I came home and fired up Google to see if I had missed something. Had Harry Potter been released? This is one of the books I always use as an example when people ask me about ebook readers and which one they should buy. I tell them ebook readers are great and all but just be aware that not ALL books are available as ebooks, for example, Harry Potter, and they are usually quite surprised to discover this and I think a lot of people don’t find out about this until they go to buy the books and can’t find them.

The only articles I could find about Harry Potter and Sony ereaders were from around August when it was announced Harry Potter had an agreement with Sony. I found other more recent articles saying the Harry Potter ebooks had been pushed back and wouldn’t be available until sometime in 2012.

I couldn’t find anything to say that if you bought a Sony ebook reader, you would be able to get a copy of Harry Potter to read on it right now. You might get a coupon so you could download it when it comes out, but it doesn’t seem to be out. Wouldn’t advertising an ebook reader with what is arguably one of the most popular books of all time, when that book is not available for that reader, be false advertising?