All you Harry Potter fans will shortly be able to write your own versions of his story on line…………
J.K. Rowling rather astonished us all the other day when she announced the shortly to be launched website called Pottermore which will be the only place that you will be able to buy the Harry Potter ebooks.
Whilst she is firm in her statement that she has no intention of writing any more Potter books, she has assembled an amazing amount of stuff in sort of Harry Potter data base that you lucky guys with literary aspirations can use to write your own Harry Potter books as this new site is also a sort of social network site, so people will be able to communicate with each other via it (I think) and work cooperatively on their versions of new Potter ebooks.
No DRM:
But the main thing that came out of this press conference that is of interest to us is that the Potter ebooks will be sold without DRM protection, but instead each sold copy will have a unique “water mark” built into it, so that should that particular copy be sold on line, it will be easy for them to know which customer it was who sold the copy illegally.
Whilst this is actually probably not really workable – if the customer in question happens to live in Uzbekistan, how on earth would they go about taking legal action against that individual? Also, all the Potter books have been available online from all manner of illegal torrent sites for ages, so legal purchasers of these ebooks will have no reason to make pirated copies and spread them on the net.
But, this is a very interesting development none the less, with any luck other publishers will follow this lead and start using this idea, and I hope will bring the end of the dreadful DRM system in sight.
It is about time that publishers realised that their clumsy and annoying DRM mania simply doesn’t work anyway.
A further point worth noting is that this move means that these ebooks should work on all ereaders as well, though so far there is only talk of issuing them in ePub format.
I find this to be the most important point with this new idea, to give us the chance to perhaps finally treat ebooks as their paper cousins…
As she describes it at a press conference about it all………
“I had more than half of the new material already written or in note form. I literally dug some out of boxes, I generated more material than ever appeared in the books. I thought ‘who would ever want to know the significance of all the difference wand woods?’ … Now you can go and see. It’s such a rich experience to do it this way.”
“I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years, and to bring the stories to a new generation, I hope fans and those new to Harry will have as much fun helping to shape Pottermore as I have. Just as I have contributed to the website, everyone else will be able to join in by submitting their own comments, drawings and other content in a safe and friendly environment. Pottermore has been designed as a place to share the stories with your friends as you journey through the site.”
Here is a short video in which she discusses this launch for your interest.
So, now you know as much as I do, now we all have to wait until July when the site will come to life.
