Amazon - and people who use parcel delivery services after selling items via the retailer's Marketplace forum - could soon see greater demand for the Kindle e-reader when all seven Harry Potter novels are added to the Kindle Owners' Lending Library.

From June 19th, the e-books will be available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish.

The development was made possible by Amazon's purchase of an exclusive licence from Harry Potter creator JK Rowling's Pottermore organisation.

People who want to access the Kindle Owners' Lending Library must sign up for Amazon Prime membership, which provides other benefits such as unlimited streaming of more than 17,000 films and television episodes.

The library now encompasses some 145,000 books - including over 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers - that can be borrowed as frequently as once a month with no due dates.

Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said: "We're absolutely delighted to have reached this agreement with Pottermore. This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we'll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners.

"The Kindle Owners' Lending Library also has an innovative feature that's of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter - unlimited supply of each title [so] you never get put on a waiting list."

Mr Bezos also noted that customers who make good use of the resource over the course of a year can recover the money they spent on buying a Kindle or signing up for Prime membership in the first place.

Since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997, Rowling's literary franchise has grown into the best-selling book series in history, with more than 450 million copies sold around the world.

The novels have been translated into 67 languages and provided the source material for eight movies that took a record-breaking $7.7 billion (£4.8bn) in worldwide box office receipts.

Author:  Adrian Medland