Wanna hear the next Harry Potter on your iPod?
No can do. No plans at this time for the newest book that'll be released on July 16, 2005 according to this Wall Street Journal story (subscription required):
In fact, Ms. Rowling has been burned by unauthorized digital publication of her five earlier novels. "You should NEVER trust any Harry Potter e-books offered for download from the Internet or on P2P/file-trading networks," she wrote in January on her Web site, www.jkrowling.com. She urged readers not to fall for these "scams." She ended her warning with a quote from Mad Eye Moody, one of her characters: "Constant vigilance!"
...Ms. Rowling's stance comes at a time when downloadable audiobooks are commanding a larger segment of the estimated $900 million audiobook market, which now is dominated by books on CD and tape. "The key has been the growth of books being played on iPods," says Gene Munster, a technology analyst at investment firm Piper Jaffray Inc. Listeners can download digital audiobooks onto their iPods or other music players from a Web site operated by Audible Inc., the country's largest purveyor of digital audiobooks; from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store, and from other locations. Projections for the size of the digital audiobook market in 2005 range from $50 million to $80 million.
What's interesting are the growing numbers of the digital audiobook market.