Pottermore thrills fans, dismays e-book sellers

MANILA, Philippines - The owls have gathered and more will come.

In London last June 23, J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter books, unveiled her latest project, Pottermore. It’s a website where millions of Harry Potter fans can experience a unique online reading experience unlike any other, said Rowling herself in a YouTube clip where she made the announcement.

A sneak-peek at Rowling’s YouTube clip gives the impression that Pottermore would be nothing short of magical. The site will have chat forums and, best of all, it will feature many untold stories from the series that Rowling said she has been hoarding for years but failed to include in her books. She also admitted to have written at least 54,000 words worth of new material about characters, places, events and objects from the Harry Potter world. Of that, about a third will be ready in time for the site’s launch.

The fans are happy.

Pottermore will also be the place to buy the audio book formats and, for the first time, official copies of e-books. The site will be the exclusive source of all digital versions of Harry Potter books.

The e-books will also be Digital Rights Management (DRM) free, which means they will be readable on any electronic book format and e-book readers.

E-book merchants are not happy.

Pottermore.com

An electrified countdown usually precedes the release of a new Harry Potter book or movie and the announcement of Pottermore continues that tradition.

Pottermore will be officially up from October, but those who follow the owl as instructed by Rowling and managed to register early could be among the one million early birds, or should we say owls, that will vie online for a chance to enter Pottermore by July 31 and help shape the experience, said Rowling. The site goes live on that date which is, of course, Harry Potter’s birthday.

As expected, the site was flooded with sign-up attempts causing it to choke and some tweeted that they were unable to do so. But this no longer seems to be the case after a week, and Rowling’s welcome video no longer mention the need to follow an owl. Either they have upgraded their systems’ traffic capacity or the Hogwarts train had left with enough signatories.

Early information about the contents of Pottermore gives fans enough reason to be giddy. Basically, Rowling said it’s the same story with few crucial additions. The most important one is you.

First, users can choose their own username, preferably wizardly, and will be given a personal homepage where they can add their own comments and image files and discover new things as they go. This guarantees that every user enters and leaves Pottermore with his own unique experiences.

Then there is the confirmed availability of the Sorting Hat to sort every Pottermore user into one of the four Hogwarts houses after answering a series of random questions. A house assignment will define a user’s Pottermore experience in a big way, and while most fans would probably want to be sorted into Gryffindor, Potter’s house, Rowling said being sorted somewhere else offers more exclusive content about their prefects and houses.

Pottermore will also bring the stories back to life, this time with the aid of new illustrations and what site developers call “Moments” based on special scenes from the books.

Users will also get to take a virtual tour of Harry Potter’s world, including the Hogwart’s Express Platform 9, Privet Drive and the Sorcerer’s Stone when the site goes live. Other places, such as the Chamber of Secrets, will be added as the site grows.

New information about beloved characters from the series is expected to lure in readers to Pottermore. Rowling said she’s releasing new content about Professor McGonagal’s life and friendship with Dumbledore, as well as Harry’s despised relatives.

In addition, Pottermore promises a way for users to experience finding their own wands in Diagon Alley. Rowling said in a press conference (partial transcripts of which can be found online) that she had gone into ridiculous detail about the materials for the 33,000 possible wands and what they signify. She also said users can engage in duels using their wands.

And who wouldn’t want to mix his or her own potions or play the Quidditch, albeit virtually?

Also, users get to have their own keys to Gringotts Wizarding Bank so they can withdraw virtual currency to fund their online journey. They can also use the money to collect chocolate frogs and other weird food items.

More Harry Potter paraphernalia and related products will also be sold through the site eventually, but those will require real money.

Pottermore, Rowling said, has been in the works for about two years and will be available in English, French, German and Spanish.

The controversial part

Online e-book sellers like Amazon and Apple can’t be happy about the fact that they won’t have a share of the potentially huge Harry Potter e-books sales. But they can only watch from the sidelines as Rowling takes full control of her books’ digital rights.

Luckily for her, there were no digital books yet when she signed a publishing deal with Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. 13 years ago or they would have acquired both the print and digital rights to the Harry Potter books.

That gives Rowling not only full control and ownership of all digital copies of Harry Potter, but also all revenues from sales. Reports, however, said she offered to give both her UK and US publishers a cut.

The fact that Pottermore is being developed in partnership with Sony also intrigued other e-book sellers. Warner Brothers owns the rights to Harry Potter films and games, so Sony can’t commercially benefit in this way. Nor can Sony release an e-reader as an exclusive device for the Harry Potter e-books because, as stated earlier, the digital versions are going to be DRM-free and available in all formats for all types of e-readers.

Apparently, Harry Potter e-books will use digital watermarking so every copy sold can be traced back from a specific buyer. This is akin to what Apple iTunes does.

The jury is still out as to whether Rowling’s bold move will change the world of book publishing both for print and digital versions. Certainly, she doesn’t seem to be taking the shortcut by just putting plain electronic copies of her books online. This early, the massive original creative work being put in Pottermore is evident and sets the bar high for other authors and publishers to follow. It’s certainly not the kind of pop-up book we used to know.