The long-promised eBooks (and more) are available at the site!
So of course, you can bet we’re going to watch this one – because there’s not much out there like “Pottermore”, so it’s kind of a giant lab experiment.
Thoughts:
- I think there will be attempts to do more “Pottermores” no matter what the success of the site – the model is interesting enough and amorphous enough for people to give it a go. If it works is a bit of a question.
- Meanwhile GigaOm chimes in with a great article on what publishers can learn from Pottermore, and points out DRM *is not your friend*.
- Building on that issue, one of the flamingly, neon-bright obvious things from Pottermore is that people respond to a good property, a place to gather, and response. The entire “walled garden” model of publishing is missing the fact you have an economy/culture building on connectivity.
- The Pottermore site may seem complex, but consider how fast sites can be put together these days – so it may be easy to create “lesser Pottermores.”
- I could see people building web/media careers on creating “Pottermore” like sites. Of course, if someone founded a business to easily make these central sites for indie media properties . . .
- Pottermore represents a multimedia exploration that is only just starting. What if a site with books tied into an MMO? Films? DLC?