Thursday, June 16, 2011

J.K. Rowling Plans Big Harry Potter Announcement Next Week! But What Is it?



  Do you feel that? That frisson of excitement, that magical feeling of antici…pation? Almost exactly one month away from the release of the eighth and final Harry Potter film, J.K. Rowling has created a new website. Named Pottermore—it doesn’t take a linguistic genius to realize that’s an anagram for “More Potter”—it appears to be only the promising words “Coming soon” and Rowling’s signature. Although, if you click on one of the owls framing the page, it takes you to a YouTube account with a countdown clock that teases an announcement from the author which, as of this moment, is exactly 6 days, 14 hours, 11 minutes, and 23 seconds away. Wait, now it’s 22 seconds.
It looks like J.K. is taking a page out of the book of J.J., as the website was found via some good new-fashioned viral marketing. Ten coordinates were given to Harry Potter fan sites which, when combined and plugged into a Google Maps-powered website, yielded the ten letters that spell P-O-T-T-E-R-M-O-R-E. To Potterheads out there who are all set to go into conniptions over the possibility of another novel, you might want to hold off. Scholastic told EW that the announcement will not be a new book.
So what will it be? My guess is one of two things: either a comprehensive, fully immersiveHarry Potter website (which would be awesome) or the revelation that the series will soon be available as e-books, a development that has been a long time coming. What do you guys think? Any other possibilities?