This should satisfy the diehards. J.K. Rowling is taking her Harry Potter franchise digital with e-books sold directly to customers and a new social network site called Pottermore. The British author has long resisted the plunge into e-books and maintained the clout to do so: "whereas publishers for other authors often own both the print and digital rights for books, Ms. Rowling owns the rights to the digital versions of the Harry Potter books herself," reports The Wall Street Journal. The social network sounds pretty involved. "Pottermore is a full-on Harry Potter online universe that allows readers to join a Hogwarts house and travel through the first Harry Potter book, while collecting points and playing games," writes The Journal. "Perhaps the biggest draw is the extra material that Ms. Rowling has written and unearthed from her notes, which gives intense Potter fans much-desired background and explanations about key characters, places and plots." Rowling told The New York Times "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 digital generation." The e-books will be compatible with any e-reader and will be available in multiple languages. Scholastic and Bloomsbury will get a cut of the revenues. On July 31 the site launches for the first million users. It will open to the general public in October.

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John Hudson