Harry Potter Goes Digital 《哈里•波特》电子书

英语学习点: Publishing 出版

Author J.K. Rowling is launching a Harry Potter website.

With the final Harry Potter movie premiering next week, fans of the wizard may be wondering where to go next.

Well, on 31 July – Harry Potter's birthday – the website Pottermore will go live.

The site will allow users to "rediscover" the Harry Potter saga.

Author J.K. Rowling has also said she has new material about Harry Potter's world to add to the experience. But the site isn't just a free 'thank-you' to fans.

It will also feature a shop where users will be able to buy eBook and digital audiobook versions of the best-sellers. They will be published through Rowling's Pottermore Publishing company, which owns the digital rights.

Print media has been kind to J.K. Rowling. The Potter novels have sold more than 450 million copies through Bloomsbury in Britain and Scholastic in the USA. So has it been difficult for her to move away from "dead-tree" media?

She said: "The format isn't particularly important to me. I am a big fan of print and paper... But very very recently this year for the first time, I downloaded eBooks and I was travelling, and it was a godsend."

Writing on the Digital Spy website, Mayer Nissim dismisses the site as "a pretty eBook store with a monopoly on selling Potter books. With sales of Kindles and iPads going through the roof, it's a pretty lucrative market."

But Pottermore is still sure to please many a potty Potter fan. It will launch in October, but a million users will be allowed to join in July.