Thursday Books Blog Report: Fans Agog Over Pottermore

Miriam at Weird Radish is one of them.

J.K. Rowling has announced a new project called Pottermore! This can only mean one thing -- MORE POTTER! she writes, adding that she cannot wait for the announcement 6-plus days from now. Thank you God, you answered my prayers for more Harry Potter!!!!

Geeky Girls Love Sci-Fi say that after the epic and emotional conclusion of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' (in 2007), we were certain we'd seen the last of J.K. Rowling's famous boy wizard.

They note that the author has said it is highly unlikely she would write more Potter novels beyond the seven in the series. But it seems we may have been wrong. Or she may have been lying. Squee!

The blog also mentions how Rowling has previously revealed the possibility of putting together an encyclopedia of her wizarding world that would include extra material not included in the books, and notes how a Rowling rep said today that Pottermore would not be a new book.

There's speculation that it could be the destination for further adventures in the Potter universe, but I suspect that it's something Rowling talked about years ago -- a Harry Potter encyclopedia or concordance, Devin Faraci writes.

At State of Play, Thomas L. McDonald shoots down the idea of a massively multiplayer Potter game, but he does take a wild shot in the dark.

He guesses we're looking at a broad-based online Harry Potter experience which may include light gaming, but also fan content, forums, news, and retail. More to the point, Rowling has already stated that she wrote a lot extra material while building the world and writing the books, and she'd like to make that available to fans. This may well be a conduit for that kind of content.

Kellie at ReaWrite hits the nail on the head, writing, Pottermore seems to be the big buzz right now even though very few people even have any idea what it is!

The Pottermore Twitter feed has about 28,500 followers already, for example.

Every Harry Potter fan is wondering what's coming, or really just excited that SOMETHING is coming, when we all thought things were coming to a close with the release of the last movie on July 15, Kellie says.

Alanna Bennett of The Mary Sue says that Rowling -- whose novels have sold more than 400 million copies around the world, according to Reuters -- will never let go of her strange emotional hold over us. Never. And we wouldn't even want her to.

Bennett recounts the scavenger hunt that led to the preliminary reveal of the Pottermore website, which she hopes is some incarnation of the encyclopedia containing everything we could possibly want to know about the wizarding world and the characters we love (and the ones we hate).

Until we know more, she writes, there's not much left to say.

Edward B. Colby is the Books editor of the International Business Times. He can be reached at e.colby@ibtimes.com.

What do you think or hope Pottermore will be? Share your thoughts in the comments below.