Rowling to pen e-book on Hogwarts

At the recent premiere in London of the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J K Rowling insisted that she is really, truly, done with writing about Harry Potter.

"Harry is done now," Rowling told Reuters.

She did not, however, rule out writing more about the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

On Wednesday Rowling's publishing platform, Pottermore, announced a coming e-book series set in the wizarding world. These digital anthologies will collect Rowling's short stories and other writings from her website, and will include some new stories about Hogwarts characters.

The first three books in the series, out September 6, will centre on the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and are roughly 10,000 words. The collections will feature some new writing - including a story about Harry's teacher Horace Slughorn, and one about Professor Minerva McGonagall's part in the second wizarding war - but will otherwise consist of previously published material from Pottermore.

The e-book news was met with jubilation but also confusion on social media, as some fans celebrated what they mistakenly thought were new Harry Potter books, and Pottermore tried to quash the rumors.

The e-books will be sold on Pottermore, as well as on Amazon and other digital retailers, and will cost $2.99 each. There are no current plans to release the books in print, and Pottermore editors have not determined how long the e-book series will be, according to Anna Rafferty, Pottermore's director of product, creative and content.

"'Pottermore Presents' is intended to supplement the Harry Potter book series with short-form content that is entertaining and thematically curated by the Pottermore editorial team," Susan L Jurevics, the chief executive of Pottermore, said in a statement. "J K Rowling's writing in these collections reveals intricate details of her characters' lives, their histories, as well as her inspiration."

Though Rowling has focused her creative energies on writing adult novels, including her Robert Galbraith detective series, she has been reluctant to fully retire Harry and his cohorts. And why would she? Harry Potter is arguably the most lucrative publishing franchise in history, with global sales topping 450 million copies, a blockbuster film franchise, a theme park and now a London stage production that is sold out well into next year. The script book of Cursed Child, which was written not by Rowling, but by the playwright Jack Thorne, has sold more than 3.3 million copies in North America in less than a month.

But Rowling's latest big announcement may test the limits of fans's devotion. Will her readers pay for something that they used to get free on her website?

Pottermore, which was created in 2011, has been an essential part of Rowling's marketing strategy ever since she officially "ended" the Harry Potter series in 2007. On Pottermore, Rowling has teased fans with details about coming projects, posted quizzes, published new short fiction and provided new background about familiar characters.

By collecting and selling material from Pottermore, Rowling is monetizing a part of the franchise that until now has been a free playground for Potter fans.

Rowling controls the e-book and audiobook rights for the Harry Potter franchise, and adding new digital material in e-book form could drive digital backlist sales. On Thursday, pre-orders had already driven the first three "Pottermore Presents" e-books to the fourth, fifth and sixth spots on Amazon's Kindle best-seller list, behind Cursed Child.

But it could also alienate some fans who have already griped about franchise exploitation after Rowling and her publishers, Scholastic and Bloomsbury, packaged the new play as the eighth book in the Harry Potter series, even though Rowling didn't write it herself.

"It is so far from the Harry Potter world we know and love," one disappointed reader wrote in a one star review of Cursed Child on Amazon. "Shame on J K Rowling for being part of this rubbish."
©2016 The New York Times News Service