The AAP is beefing up its monthly reports with data from many more publishers — 1,149 for January 2012 compared to under 100 in past months — and more detailed reporting on specific genres: Children’s/young adult e-book sales are now broken out and religious book sales are divided by hardcover, paperback and e-books.

Here’s how January 2012 compared to January 2011. Overall, trade sales were up 27 percent compared to January 2011, and children’s/YA sales were up 80.5 percent compared to January 2011.

What accounts for the growth? The AAP notes that last January’s trade sales were negatively affected as bankrupt Borders began returning books to publishers. Children’s books have seen strong growth for a few months now — due in part to highly successful series like The Hunger Games, and also possibly due to “Shop Local” initiatives around the holidays.

The Harry Potter digital materials are distributed to libraries through OverDrive. They were available for pre-reserve in OverDrive client libraries like the NYPL a couple of weeks ago, but OverDrive then “temporarily suspended pre-sales and display of these titles at library websites in order to “[coordinate] launch plans with Pottermore.”

Pottermore announced its library policy at the launch of the shop earlier this week. The Bookseller reported, “Libraries will be able to loan each e-book edition as many times as there is demand, but the license will only last for five years, after which libraries will need to purchase a new edition.”

The e-books are available as EPUB and Kindle editions.

If you want to borrow a Harry Potter e-book from the library, place a hold now. At the NYPL, there are 78 holds on the e-book version of the first title in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. The NYPL bought 50 copies.

Negative reactions have a few common themes so far:

Downloading the books is too complicated: You create a Pottermore account, buy a book, download it and then read it on your computer, load it onto your device or link to your Kindle, Nook, Sony (NYSE: SNE) or Google (NSDQ: GOOG) account and wirelessly transfer it. (Here’s the process for various e-readers.) These are “unnecessary additional barriers to access the books,” Techdirt says, and “the number of forms and clicks needed to buy a book [are] likely to put off a lot of customers.”

There are language and regional restrictions: Wired‘s Tim Carmody notes that these restrictions “make certain editions of books available only in particular countries. This means that readers in the U.S. still can’t read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone rather than Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, discover the rich U.K. slang and spelling of the unbowdlerized editions, or listen to Stephen Fry’s masterful reading of the audiobook series rather than Jim Dale’s.”

There’s still DRM, kind of: The Pottermore e-books are watermarked (or, as Pottermore calls it, “personalized”) and each can be downloaded for personal use up to eight times, so users can read the books across gadgets (or give each of their kids a copy). However, Nate Hoffelder at the Digital Reader discovered yesterday that when you buy an e-book from Pottermore and wirelessly push it to your account at an etailer (Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS), Sony, Google) the book takes on that etailer’s DRM.

These complaints aren’t that big of a deal: Sorry, that one was mine. I don’t believe any of the above will be particularly problematic for everyday readers. The download/wireless transfer process may catch up a few but I didn’t find it difficult if you follow the instructions (no glitches) and I think a couple extra steps are worth it since you have the ability to download the book eight times and can also just load the EPUB file onto devices manually if you want. Similarly, language and regional restrictions may bother a few die-hard HP (NYSE: HPQ) fans but those are likely the same people who went out and bought all seven e-books yesterday anyway.

Possibly more problematic: Pottermore and Apple’s iBookstore haven’t come to an agreement yet because Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) uses the agency model for everything sold on iTunes. But Pottermore and Apple could still end up making a deal, and if they don’t, Apple may be a bigger loser than Pottermore. For now, users who want to read the Harry Potter e-books on an Apple device can just drag it onto their device and open it in iBooks. Or they can read it on another retailer’s app.

Overall, the Pottermore shop appears to be handling the presumably massive traffic it got yesterday just fine (though there was a possibly related glitch for under an hour at Amazon) and the site is promoting DRM-free books in a way no big-six publisher has before. For now I’m raising a glass of butterbeer to the Pottermore shop’s launch, but if you’re having issues or problems I didn’t mention here, let me know in the comments.

Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter community site and the exclusive source for the Harry Potter digital audiobooks and e-books, was announced last year. While the interactive community portion of the site is still in beta and set to open to a general audience in April, the bookstore is open now. (It was originally supposed to open in October 2011.)

What do the books cost? The first three books in the Harry Potter series are $7.99 (£4.99) as e-books and $29.99 (£17.99) as digital audiobooks. The final four books in the series are $9.99 (£6.99) as e-books and $44.99 (£32.99) as digital audiobooks. Readers can also buy a complete e-book bundle for $57.54 or a complete digital audiobook bundle for $242.94

Which e-readers are compatible with the e-books? It looks as though Pottermore has done a great job making the e-books available across every possible device. And the site has worked out an unusual arrangement with major e-bookstores:

We have partnered with the following services to make it easy to send your Harry Potter eBook to your account. (Subject to reading service availability in your country.)

Sony (NYSE: SNE) Reader online account (US and Canadian based customers only) [Sony is at the top because Sony is a Pottermore partner]
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle (available in most countries)
Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) NOOK (US and Canadian based customers only)
Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Play (This service is currently available in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States)

The accounts are linked during the download process. In order to set up a linked account, please go to ‘My books’, select one of your Harry Potter eBooks to download and choose your reading service. You can view these linked accounts by going to ‘My shop account’ then ‘Linked accounts’. Please note you can link to one account per reading service.

Check out the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone entry on Amazon this morning and you’ll see this (click to enlarge):

What, you haven’t seen Amazon do that before? No, you sure haven’t.

Amazon also has an FAQ for how to get the Harry Potter e-books onto your Kindle.

Is the process too complicated, with several clicks before you actually have the book on your e-reader? Maybe. We’ll surely see more reactions to it this morning as people start buying the e-books. Note Pottermore is directing users to the individual retailers’ customer support so it may be Amazon (and Barnes & Noble and so on) flooded with customer service requests rather than Pottermore.

UK book trade publication The Bookseller confirms that e-book retailers will eventually receive affiliate fees. Pottermore CEO Charlie Redmayne said “clearly [retailers] should earn out of it in the same way we should.”

What about Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and iOS? Directions on how to load the book onto iPhones and iPads are here. But The Bookseller reports that Pottermore wasn’t able to come to an iBookstore agreement with Apple by the time the Pottermore shop launched.

Is there DRM? No, the e-books do not have DRM. Instead, they’re watermarked (or, as Pottermore kindly describes it, “personalized”): “The Pottermore Shop personalises eBooks with a combination of watermarking techniques that relate to the book, to the purchaser and the purchase time. This allows us to track and respond to possible copyright misuse.” Go, Pottermore. Watermarking is often floated as a good possible alternative to DRM — one that allows users easy access to the books they bought without wanting to share them — but it hasn’t been used much in trade books before now.

The site notes users can download the e-books they buy for personal use up to eight times:

eBooks purchased from the Pottermore Shop can be downloaded for your personal use up to eight times, at no additional cost. If you want to share your Harry Potter eBook with your own children, that’s absolutely fine with us too, so long as they are under 18. Actually, we’d encourage it! However, once they are over 18, they will need to buy their own copy.

You might want to download a copy to your laptop, your tablet, and your child’s eReader – whatever the combination – you have eight available downloads per book. There’s no time limit to use up your downloads, so if you lose your device or close an account with one of our partners, come back at any time to take another copy.

Eight downloads will normally be plenty, so you won’t need to buy again. However, if you do download a book more than eight times, or want to buy it as a gift, you will need to purchase it again. For more details on downloads and how they can be used, please see our Terms & Conditions.

Are the e-books available internationally? Which languages are available? The e-books and digital audiobooks are only available in U.S. and UK English for now, but “French, German, Spanish and Italian language eBooks will be available soon, and many further languages will follow. Digital audio books in German and Italian will also be available shortly.” The e-books and digital audiobooks are available for sale internationally.

Are the e-books available in libraries now? The e-books and digital audiobooks will be available to libraries through OverDrive, but this morning I’m not seeing them available in the NYPL yet. The Bookseller reports, “Libraries will be able to loan each e-book edition as many times as there is demand, but the license will only last for five years, after which libraries will need to purchase a new edition.”

Kobo is running a mostly unpublicized deal offering each of the e-books in the Hunger Games trilogy, published by Scholastic, up to 85 percent off list price. Add one of the e-books to your cart and apply coupon code “HUNGERGAMESDEAL,” “HUNGERGAMESDEAL2″ and “HUNGERGAMESDEAL3″ to get it cheaper than anywhere else: The first e-book in the trilogy, Hunger Games, gets knocked down to $0.83 with the coupon; the second e-book, Catching Fire, is $1.16 with the code; and the third, Mockingjay, is $1.07. (Note that Scholastic does not use agency pricing; therefore, stores that sell its e-books can sell them at whatever prices they want.)

The super-low prices don’t appear until the e-books are in your cart with a coupon code applied, and so far, Amazon’s algorithm hasn’t caught the discounted prices and matched them. At Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), the trilogy is taking up the top three spots on the Kindle bestseller list — and at number five is the bundle of all three titles for $18.99. Katniss’s story is interrupted only by 50 Shades of Gray at #4.

At Amazon’s Kindle store, The Hunger Games is $5. Catching Fire is $7.70 and Mockingjay is $7.14. All three titles are also available through Amazon’s Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which lets Kindle-owning prime members borrow one e-book per month for free. The trilogy is $18.99 as an e-book bundle. It will be interesting to see if Amazon matches Kobo’s extremely discounted coupon prices.

At Barnes & Noble’s Nook store, the trilogy takes up the top three spots on the Nook bestseller list, at prices higher than Amazon’s: Hunger Games for $8.49, Catching Fire for $9.79 and Mockingjay for $9.79. The three bundled e-books are $28.29, nearly $10 more expensive than Amazon.

You’ll also find deals on other Scholastic dystopian YA e-books (yeah, Hunger Games is just the tip of the iceberg). Five of the titles are $2.99 each at Kobo; the same titles are $1.99 each through Amazon’s Kindle Daily Deal.

Finally, Hunger Games publisher Scholastic is running a deal on YA dystopian e-books by lesser-known authors (yeah, Hunger Games is just the tip of the iceberg), selling five of them for $1.99 each. Those books are available as Amazon’s Kindle Daily Deal.

Hearst started publishing Good Housekeeping-branded $0.99 “mini cookbooks” in digital formats last year; it’s published a total of 75 cookbooks of all lengths in digital formats. The company’s most recent e-single is the $2.99 Good Housekeeping “Amazing Soup Diet.” “After the contents page, we immediately have an upsell, a page of related titles right after the table of contents, that drives people back to the platform they bought the book on,” Deval said. “A cookbook is not a narrative form, and you can’t assume that the reader will get to the very last page of the book, where publishers traditionally have an upsell.”

Hearst property Cosmopolitan magazine sold over 40,000 copies of the e-single it published with Open Road last August, “Cosmo’s Sexiest Stories Ever.” The company originally sold that title at $0.99, then increased the price to $1.99 about two months ago. “In the beginning, we thought there wasn’t enough content to charge $1.99,” said Cosmo editor-at-large John Searles, but the price increase hasn’t hurt sales so far.

This summer, Cosmopolitan will publish a single three-part story across its June, July and August issues, then release it as an e-single. The brand is also experimenting with creating content around recurring magazine features, like “Sex Questions Answered in 20 Words or Less.” Cosmo will work with Open Road to publish a new e-single, “Cosmo’s Naughtiest Questions in 20 Words or Less,” this spring. It’s “all content that already exists from back issues,” Searles said.

Cosmo promotes its e-singles in the magazine and those promotions correlate with “a direct lift in sales,” Searles said. He also said the company saw a “substantial number of sales” of “Cosmo’s Sexiest Stories Ever” through Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) — a reminder that while Kindle Singles is a major player it’s not the only one in the game. (“Sexiest Stories Ever” was available in the general Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) store, but not as a Kindle Single.)

Seventeen magazine is now working with Open Road to publish a collection of three e-singles: “Terrifying True Teen Stories,” “Shocking True Teen Stories” and “Inspiring True Teen Stories.” Each will consist of ten to twelve first-person articles.

“It’s important always to bring the reader back to what else they can experience of the brand,” Deval said. “We’ll cross-sell the e-singles among one another, but give readers a passageway back to the brand as well.”

The library titles are available now as EPUB and OverDrive says they’ll also be available through Kindle in the U.S. only.

I noticed the e-books today when I was browsing through the NYPL’s “New eBook Additions” section. The publisher is listed as Pottermore and the release date as April 30, 2011. The covers look the same as the covers on the print books.

All seven of the Harry Potter titles are there, as are the Harry Potter digital audiobooks.

According to the listings (I think that link should work even if you are not a NYPL member), the NYPL has bought 25 copies of each e-book and there are already many patrons on the waiting lists — 55 people on the list for the first e-book in the series, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

Digital library distributor OverDrive is responsible for providing the Harry Potter e-books to libraries. I only have access to the NYPL, but if your library is powered by OverDrive and you are interested in the Harry Potter e-books, it’s worth going and checking out that library’s collections.

“Survey on Students and Tablets 2012″ (PDF) polled 1,206 U.S. college students and 204 college-bound high school seniors. Some findings:

–College students prefer digital over print for “fun” reading (57 percent) and textbook reading (58 percent), “a reversal from last year, when more students preferred print over digital.” Pearson says the trend is also apparent among high-school seniors (though it doesn’t break out which format the majority prefer), “and is mostly driven by an increase in the preference to use tablets for reading.” The study doesn’t ask whether students are using tablets or e-ink e-readers for reading.

–A quarter of college students now own a tablet, compared to just 7 percent last year. Seventeen percent of college-bound high school seniors own a tablet, compared to four percent last year.

–Thirty-five percent of college students who own a tablet also own “an e-book reader or small tablet device.” (Not sure what a “small tablet device” is! Asking Pearson.)

–Among college students who own tablets, the iPad is the most popular (63 percent), followed by the Kindle Fire (26 percent) and Samsung Galaxy Tab (15 percent).

via INFOdocket

On the Pottermore Insider blog, the company explains beta users’ feedback made it “clear that our original platform wouldn’t be suitable when millions more users came on to the site.” So they chose to “move Pottermore to an entirely different platform set up. This ‘invisible’ change has involved a lot of work behind the scenes but it will enable our users to get the best from Pottermore as it grows and develops.”

Now, at the beginning of April, Pottermore will sell the Harry Potter series as e-books and digital audiobooks for the first time.

Pottermore, including its e-bookstore, was originally supposed to launch back in October. At that time, though, the company wasn’t able to open general registration on the site or launch the store, citing “overwhelming traffic concerns.” Throughout the beta period, the site has often been slow or impossible to access.