Pottermore leak

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Pottermore, if the yahoo info below is true apparently it's a online game...why am I not surprised - IF it is a game, who wants to take a wild guess they want us to pay to play it.

http://blog.games.yahoo.com/blog/792-report-j-k-rowling-to-unveil-harry-potter-online-game

Comments

[the-bitter-word.livejournal.com]

I did a little poking around.

Here's an article (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/jk-rowlings-new-pottermore-site-will-change-digital-publishing/240927/) on how the ebooks cut out the middleman and give all the profits to Herself. Gotta hand it to her.

I guess the ebooks will offer some kind of enhanced reading experience, because heaven knows, reading text alone is just too much work -- this from an author whose books are credited with encouraging kids to read.

There are audiobooks. I love to have a story read to me, but the audiobooks that are already available are too expensive for me.

As for social networking, I wonder if the site knows what they are getting into with fan attacks and tedious trolls, which persist on even seemingly harmless sites. I wonder if Pottermore has a plan to deal with this conflict, especially if it involves non-sanctioned ships. The site promises a "safe online experience." It will be interesting to see how this is set up and enforced.

Treasure hunt aspect. (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/treasure-hunt-for-potter-fans-16015198.html)

This (http://mashable.com/2011/06/23/pottermore-2/) has a link to images in the comments.

Then there is the extra material (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/23/pottermore-website-jk-rowling-harry-potter) she had on hand or will write (this article is very detailed), which "already stretches to 18,000 words about the novels' characters, places and objects, with more to come." I foresee Dumbledore-like annotations more than an encyclopedia. Whatever it is, it's canon now!

There's an interesting thing about sorting into Houses and how extra material is filtered to you by this process. This is unsettling to me, actually, but I like having access to information.

I don't know if I can bear to look. I am pretty sure I can't bear to pay to look.

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Yea, I'm certainly not going to pay for it. So if it is REALLY free then I'll look...but if they think they're going to milk cash out of me their nuts.

The only thing I'm willing to buy potter related are Tonner dolls...das it...I'm not paying to see the movie, I'll wait for it on HBO or hell, either YouTube as eventually you can watch bits online. and half the time the trailers they put out now show as much as I really need to see.

But if this crap ends up being a pay site, screw that I'll just wait for someone else to post about the extra information they found on there.

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Yea, I'm certainly not going to pay for it. So if it is REALLY free then I'll look...but if they think they're going to milk cash out of me their nuts.

I suspect that it'll be free for a basic level of access, but that they'll be charges for things like "Advanced Access", or to not have advertising display on the page...

[majorjune.livejournal.com]

Then there is the extra material she had on hand or will write (this article is very detailed), which "already stretches to 18,000 words about the novels' characters, places and objects, with more to come." I foresee Dumbledore-like annotations more than an encyclopedia. Whatever it is, it's canon now!

This whole thing was rather ho-hum to me...until I checked out that last link!

Now I'm tempted to try to become one of the "select few" 1 million to be allowed in on July 31st, just so I can be at least be a spy to report back on what's what -- and maybe indulge in some surreptious sabotage to boot! LOL

Maybe we ALL should try to do the same! ;-)

[wolf-willow31.livejournal.com]

Now I'm tempted to try to become one of the "select few" 1 million ...

I hope somebody does it and reports back! I'm not sure I'm tough enough to do it myself. It took me weeks to get over the waves of nausea that DH gave me. Call me a coward, but I'm not ready to risk going through something like that again. ;)

[mmmarcusz.livejournal.com]

18,000 words

That's not much - about a chapter's worth of stuff.

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

Thank you for those referrals, very interesting.

Kudos to Rowling for making the (basic) web site free. At this point nothing's been mentioned about charges except for the e-books and audio books.

Like one of the commentators says in the last web site you referenced this will no doubt 'keep this already tired and ubiquitous franchise in the public eye for years to come'. Yep. It'll keep the momentum going along until they whip up the television series. :-)

When the 'extra material' was mentioned I wondered if perhaps Rowling would slip in some canon corrections, to fix some of her mistakes. The sentences so far state that the additional work will be part of the *web site* and not integrated into the e-books, so any 'fixes' aren't going to be as direct as producing second editions at any rate. Still, it will be interesting to see how things unfold. I gather it's going to be a chapter-by-chapter thing stretching over years. Let's see what happens when Harry gets his invisibility cloak in PS:

Ron: Crikey, Harry, that's an invisibility cloak! They're really rare! And wow, yours looks so pristine, maybe it's Death's own Hallow, ha ha!

It looks like it'll be a long time before the worst books will come down the pipeline with their amendments.

As for social networking, I wonder if the site knows what they are getting into with fan attacks and tedious trolls, which persist on even seemingly harmless sites. I wonder if Pottermore has a plan to deal with this conflict, especially if it involves non-sanctioned ships. The site promises a "safe online experience."

Yes, it's REALLY going to be interesting to see how they handle negative criticism - non-canon ships and pointing out/mocking the mistakes as they unroll. Does 'safe online experience' mean 'safe from criticism'? 'Safe for our Jo'?

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

From the transcript (here (http://www.hpana.com/news.21293.html)).

"The other thing is, this is free. You don’t have to buy anything to access what you’ve seen today. You don’t have to pay to get the extra material, you don’t hve to buy a single thing to go onto Pottermore and have the whole experience you’ve just seen. That was really important to me. This was about the give-back. The technology now existed to do something outside the books and the films for existing fans."

She wants to 'give back' - which is laudable - but, when it comes to allowing negative comments from participants ...

... I wonder if she can take it? :-)

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

Do you know, this "already stretches to 18,000 words about the novels" bothers me a bit. 18,000 words is not that much. I think I've written more words than that about the novels. So have many other fans - some, like Logospilgrim, have written whole books about Snape.

My two cents!

[karentheunicorn.livejournal.com]

Yea, I think I have chapters in my fanfic that are around 10,000.

The thing is, what is this 18,000 going to be really? Is it something thats going to actually explain things we have questions about OR is it more like, Ginny's wand is made of XYZ, This characters birthday is XYZ.

Okay so all of that can be valid info if you are curious but thats kind of 'fluff' info isn't it? It doesn't technically answer motiveations for a character to know their birthday.

Unless she's going to be giving us a extended essay on certain subjects...if it's just little bits of fluff info then I don't know if that kind of info can be consider something to brag about. She could have just as easily done that by having another interview every couple years or just posted it on her existing website.

Another part of me thinks they are trying to keep up with the changing times. Sticking the stories into the digital media world and in the online world is basicly moving it into the future. I know that she is saying that it's all free, but if I remember rightly she says everything you've seen is going to be free. I'm fairly sure the ebook downloads are not free and I'm a little suspitious about the everything you've seen. I have to ask, did we see everything?

Then I wonder Maybe she's realized that giving canon info or canon alterations in an interview IS a bad thing. Maybe she's trying to give an info dump in another way.

[oryx_leucoryx]

When Beedle the Bard came out the Lexicon hyped up how much info there was on Dumbles' family or the malfoys and what not. Turned out Albus had a maiden aunt named Honoria and there was that Brutus Malfoy guy way back then, big deal.

(Does anyone know the word count for 'Beedle'?)

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

From the transcript:

"The other thing is, this is free. You don’t have to buy anything to access what you’ve seen today. You don’t have to pay to get the extra material, you don’t hve to buy a single thing to go onto Pottermore and have the whole experience you’ve just seen. That was really important to me. This was about the give-back. The technology now existed to do something outside the books and the films for existing fans."

She wants to 'give back' - which is laudable - but, when it comes to allowing negative comments from participants ...

... I wonder if she can take it? :-)