Accio: New “Harry Potter” audiobook. The opportunities for making money from this franchise looks like it has no limits.
Audible, a subsidiary of Amazon AMZN, +0.64% announced Thursday it’s adding “Harry Potter: A History of Magic,” from Pottermore Publishing, to its library and, don’t worry, it won’t be in the “Restricted Section.”
Natalie Dormer, a British actress who plays Margaery Tyrell in “Game of Thrones” and Cressida in “The Hunger Games” will read it. Listeners can pre-order the audiobook starting Thursday, but for now, it’s “stupefied” — it won’t release until Oct. 4.
“Harry Potter: A History of Magic” isn’t a new addition to J.K. Rowling’s canon. It’s actually a nonfiction book that “reveals some of the hidden stories behind real-world magic” and “explores some of J.K. Rowling’s magical inventions alongside their folkloric, cultural and historical forebears,” Audible said in statement.
It will also include interviews with Jim Dale and Stephen Fry, who have previously narrated “Harry Potter” books for Audible and illustrators Jim Kay and Olivia Lomenech Gill, who have created art featured in the “Harry Potter” and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” books, for Kindle and in print.
This is not the only recent “Harry Potter” spinoff. An exhibition also called “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” premiered at the British Library last year and is coming to the New York Historical Society on Oct. 5. It will stay until Jan. 27, 2019.
Visiting the exhibit will hopefully cost less than the popular play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” on Broadway. Tickets to the show cost hundreds — unless you know how to get them for cheap.
Listening to the latest audiobook might be an emotional experience, particularly for Harry Potter fans. A recent study from psychologists at University College in London (funded by Audible) found that audiobooks elicit a stronger emotional response from listeners than videos do.
One theory on why: The way readers and audiobook listeners “recreate” the scene in their minds heightens the experience, Dr. Joseph Devlin, one of the researchers, said.
They are, you might say, enchanted.
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