J.K. Rowling announces 'Pottermore' - using YouTube

I saw articles on Mashable and The Guardian in the past few days speculating what 'Pottermore' was all about, there were rumours of a fake leak that it was a game, with wands hidden in the real world for fans to find. They all said to look out for the announcement on the 23rd.

The mystery is now revealed!

JK herself stars in a video released today announcing that it is part game, part online community that fans can contribute to, and a place where for the first time people can buy the Harry Potter ebooks.



I still can't imagine what it's actually going to do, but the concept sounds very exciting, and at the very least fans will be drawn to it because JK will be putting up hidden content she has been "hoarding for years" about the Harry Potter world.

This is due to launch in October, though a lucky few can participate early. She ends with a mysterious call to "follow the owl" if you want a chance of being one of the founding contributors.

The middle of the video is particularly beautiful, using cutout animation recreating images from the book using the actual text of the book. This is clearly a nod to the wildly successful book trailer produced in New Zealand in 2009 for Maurice Gee's 'Going West,' which I wrote about in 2009 here, and has now achieved almost a million views which makes it the most successful book trailer ever.

Here are some of my questions:

Will this result in a spike of new sales?
How far will the site tie in with the film?
How much will it be an ecommerce site flogging Harry Potter merchandise, or will it offfer something genuinely exciting and original to fans?
Will the new content be publishing in book form one day? Who will own the rights if so?
What the Harry Potter fan fic community think?

I love the way it all links together - the author, a video, the text, the ideas, the text itself, a game and a fan fiction community. It's a beautiful example of transmedia, where the digital meets fiction and the fans meet the author, and it will all end up in ebooks and the excitement around Harry Potter living on beyond the final film.

Very exciting times for publishing!

The Mumsnet Rules book trailer

Bloomsbury have produced a really nice video supporting the launch of their new book "The Mumsnet Rules" which you can watch here:



I'm impressed by the quality of this video, Bloomsbury have been making book trailers for a while and this is a big step up from some of the others (have a look at Bloomsbury's YouTube channel).  It's short, to-the-point, it's not a TV ad, no cheesy voiceovers, and it looks like they didn't blow the budget making it either. It definitely makes sense to do this kind of online promotion when the book is based on an incredibly popular forum.

What they say about the book: Do ‘milestones’ feel like millstones? Does the thought of waiting at the school gate make you more nervous than your five-year-old? Do you find yourself sometimes tempted just to let your children fight to the death? And does flicking through childcare books leave you feeling mostly bewildered and blamed? Then The Mumsnet Rules are what you have been waiting for…

Some questions for you:

-          Should you use rules when parenting your children?
-          What other rules might you use when parenting?
-          Do you think that these golden rules work?