From NPR...
Pottermore.
When a new website appeared from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling called "Pottermore," sporting nothing but some owls and a link to a countdown clock on YouTube that, as of right now, has a little less than six days to go until she makes an "announcement," the speculation was rampant.
Of course, the creation of rampant speculation is the only reason to do something like this in the first place. The only reason to announce an upcoming announcement a week in advance is to bring on a round of heavy breathing from fans eager to know what that announcement, when it eventually comes, is going to be.
As Morning Edition mentioned today, the only thing Rowling's publicists will say is that the announcement is not a new book. In other words, "Pottermore" does not mean more Potter, at least not in the way fans might most optimistically think about it. It's important to get that out of the way, because if Rowling's fans convinced themselves that she was going to write another Harry Potter book and then she didn't, nothing else she could possibly announce could be anything other than a massive, soul-crushing disappointment to them.
It seems more plausible that Pottermore could be some kind of a reference site; an in-depth online Harry Potter experience. Rowling won a court case in 2008 against the publisher of a proposed Potter "lexicon," and part of her reasoning was that she intended at some point to write a definitive Potter encyclopedia. It's eminently sensible to suspect that "Pottermore" could be the online home of an interactive version of that encyclopedia if it's to be made available in that format. (She's said in the past that she'd donate any proceeds of an encyclopedia she created to charity, so it makes sense that it might become a free online tool rather than a book from which she took no money.) Fans have also speculated that the site could include online role-playing games, or that it could become a fan site that could compete with existing fan-operated sites (not a prospect everyone is excited about).
Read the rest of the story here.
Pottermore.
When a new website appeared from Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling called "Pottermore," sporting nothing but some owls and a link to a countdown clock on YouTube that, as of right now, has a little less than six days to go until she makes an "announcement," the speculation was rampant.
Of course, the creation of rampant speculation is the only reason to do something like this in the first place. The only reason to announce an upcoming announcement a week in advance is to bring on a round of heavy breathing from fans eager to know what that announcement, when it eventually comes, is going to be.
As Morning Edition mentioned today, the only thing Rowling's publicists will say is that the announcement is not a new book. In other words, "Pottermore" does not mean more Potter, at least not in the way fans might most optimistically think about it. It's important to get that out of the way, because if Rowling's fans convinced themselves that she was going to write another Harry Potter book and then she didn't, nothing else she could possibly announce could be anything other than a massive, soul-crushing disappointment to them.
It seems more plausible that Pottermore could be some kind of a reference site; an in-depth online Harry Potter experience. Rowling won a court case in 2008 against the publisher of a proposed Potter "lexicon," and part of her reasoning was that she intended at some point to write a definitive Potter encyclopedia. It's eminently sensible to suspect that "Pottermore" could be the online home of an interactive version of that encyclopedia if it's to be made available in that format. (She's said in the past that she'd donate any proceeds of an encyclopedia she created to charity, so it makes sense that it might become a free online tool rather than a book from which she took no money.) Fans have also speculated that the site could include online role-playing games, or that it could become a fan site that could compete with existing fan-operated sites (not a prospect everyone is excited about).
Read the rest of the story here.
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