(2011-07-01) Pottermore

J K Rowling is starting a Potter More site around Harry Potter. The site launches on July 31 (Mr. Potter's birthday), when one million fans can compete in an online challenge to gain early access. Pottermore opens its gates to the masses for free on October 1, 2011.

The site will sell EBook-s and Audio Book-s (digital delivery) of the existing books, plus reveal background details on characters and settings Rowling says she's been “hoarding for years.”... Those hoping for a sophisticated first-person odyssey may be disappointed. Pottermore isn't a game: it's a series of illustrated environments, themed around “moments” from the books. All of these extra details appear to be the Harry Potter encyclopedia that Rowling has alluded to in the past... One possible shortcoming of the project is the fact that the interactive experience is developed separately from the e-books — but this is likely because the project was launched more than a year and a half ago, before the arrival of the first IPad. Sounds like all the classic overproduced-but-shallow agency websites of the past 10 years, vs the hypertexty MetaWeb.

• The issue here is probably less that a new interactive experience mixes reading with other media, but the way in which it goes about it. The Harry Potter books were not written with these other interactive forms in mind, and attaching other media after the fact, rather than integrating them into the reader’s experience as a fundamental part of the telling the story, can be gimmicky.

In a further bold move, Rowling has opted to keep the e-books DRM-free, meaning that they are not locked into one device or platform. She is instead opting for digital watermarking (Social DRM) that links the identify of the purchaser to the copy of the e-book. This doesn’t prevent copyright theft but does ensure that any copies will be traceable to a particular user. This is similar to how iTunes is DRM-free, but embeds user account information within each file purchased.

Created in partnership with Son Y (actually developed by digital creative agency Think (in close partnership with Rowling) and sponsored by Son Y), Pottermore will be the only place that fans can buy the Harry Potter books in a digital format, a method of distribution that Rowling has held out on for years -- and we now know why: She's cutting out the middleman and keeping almost all of the profits for herself... Digital distributor Over Drive will provide the e-book platform for Pottermore, according to Paid Content. Bloomsbury, Rowling's publishers in the U.K. will receive some slice of the revenues as will, presumably, Scholastic, her U.S. publisher.

Mar'2012: The public launch has been pushed back to April'2012. It became clear that our original platform wouldn’t be suitable when millions more users came on to the site. So we made a big decision: to move Pottermore to an entirely different platform set up. This ‘invisible’ change has involved a lot of work behind the scenes but it will enable our users to get the best from Pottermore as it grows and develops.

Mar27'2012: The EBook-s have gone up for sale at Potter More. Without DRM. And Amazon is linking to them (getting Affiliate Program revenue only!). Mike Shatzkin on the implications.