Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s interactive Harry Potter web site that will also be the exclusive vendor of Harry Potter e-books, will remain in Beta for longer than anticipated and will also go offline for “a few days” starting tomorrow. Pottermore opened for experimentation and feedback for a select 1 million Harry Potter fans starting in late summer and was scheduled to open to the wider public starting in October. Read More
When Charlie Redmayne came to HarperCollins in 2008 to oversee the book publisher’s digital transformation, the move was greeted with fanfare, a sign that the industry was taking a proactive approach to the possibilities offered by new technology for interactive books. Today the news broke that Mr. Redmayne, who was named chief digital officer of HarperCollins in 2009, has left the company for Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s interactive web site. Pottermore will also be the exclusive retailer for the digital editions of the Harry Potter series, which are not yet available in e-book format. Read More
The Observer has spent a small amount of time tooling around the Beta version of Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s digital fantasmagoria, which is currently open to a select one million users. We’ll fill you in with more details later but so far our exploration of the site has been a somewhat uneventful experience (but Read More
The Observer is still awaiting our welcome e-mail from Pottermore, but today was the first day a lucky few users got to go explore J.K. Rowling’s interactive Potter experience. So far reviews are favorable. Entertainment Weekly reports:
“Those Read More
Last month The Observer managed to “find the magic quill” and register for early access to a Beta version of Pottermore, J.K. Rowling’s online book store (this was all done with sober reportorial disinterest, with no childish excitement whatsoever.) It appears that yesterday Pottermore began sending out e-mails to a few of the Read More
The problem with looking to J.K. Rowling for inspiration about how to transition a book franchise into the digital era is that no author can really be compared to J.K. Rowling.
“She’s kind of like the Oprah of children’s books,” said Lorraine Shanley, co-founder of Market Partners International, which consults on digital books.
“I mean, Read More
