Hurried Harry

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In a twist of wizardry that would have even the most jaded of Hogwarts' star pupils taking notice, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) announced that it would be teaming up with UPS (NYSE: UPS) and the United States Postal Service to deliver "hundreds of thousands" of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince books to Potter-hungry homes on the same day as its July 16 release.

OK, so this isn't exactly magic. Retailers receive books well before they are released under the stipulation that shoppers can't get their hands on the merchandise until the official release date. This practice has already taken root in the online world. With Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX), I know that if I toss a disc in the mail over the weekend that the DVD rental giant's local distribution center will receive it on Monday and ship out a new DVD before its official Tuesday release, and I will likely have that movie on Tuesday like everybody else.

Scholastic (Nasdaq: SCHL) has announced that it will be printing 10.8 million copies of the Potter book in its initial stateside run, so supply will not be a problem. You can always preorder, but you should have no problem landing a copy at your neighborhood Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) or Borders (NYSE: BGP). Yet the convenience of ordering it online, at a 40% discount, already has many parents going the online route. The book has been on the Amazon best-seller list since the company started taking preorders back in December.

Instant gratification has always been one of the biggest knocks on e-commerce. But now, with Netflix providing mail-delivered rentals on their release dates, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) serving up musical tracks digitally, and now Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendation Amazon delivering Potter to your porch pronto, online convenience is starting to carry more weight. That is quite the trick after all, Harry.

Hungry for more news on Amazon?

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• Talk about Amazon in our active Amazon.com discussion board.

Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz has been a satisfied Amazon.com customer since the 1990s. However, he does not own shares in the company, though he does own a piece of Netflix. The Fool has a disclosure policy. He is also part of the Rule Breakers newsletter research team, seeking out tomorrow's ultimate growth stocks a day early.