A Look Behind the “Pottermore Presents” E-books

by · Published · Updated

We learned yesterday that Pottermore will be publishing three new e-books on September 6, Hogwarts: An Incomplete and Unreliable Guide, Short Stories from Hogwarts of Power, Politics and Pesky Poltergeists, and Short Stories from Hogwarts of Heroism, Hardship and Dangerous Hobbies. The books will feature content from Pottermore’s archives, and today, Pottermore discussed how these e-books came to be.

Reactions to yesterday’s news have varied from excitement to confusion as to why Pottermore is publishing information that was previously available for free online – but one snippet from today’s article is sure to interest pretty much everyone:

On top of that, two of the eBooks include new pieces from J.K. Rowling herself, previously written for Pottermore but not yet published.

That’s right – there will be new writing from Rowling in these collections – that’s definitely something to get excited about!

Anna Rafferty, director of product, creative, and content at Pottermore, also offered some insight into how pieces were selected for the collections and how their existence came to be:

It’s been a wonderful curation exercise. We read through everything in our archives, took pieces written by J.K. Rowling and the Pottermore editorial team, and sewed it all together – from the delicious little snippets of wizarding world lore, to the longer narratives on characters and magical phenomena, and categories of themed miscellany started to emerge in our thinking. The collections are very deliberately not segmented into binary poles of ‘goodies and baddies’ – the wizarding world, and the characters within it, are more nuanced than that…We wanted to take jewels of writing that already exist on Pottermore and some that were still unpublished in the archives, surface and connect them in a way that’s easy for the reader to enjoy – and read offline, if they want! – and make the writing available in new places. I think these collections do that beautifully.

What are your feelings about these e-books? Will you be purchasing them?

Jessica J.

I've been making magic at MuggleNet since 2012, when I first joined the staff as a News intern. I've never wavered from the declaration in my childhood journal, circa October 2000: "I LOVE Harry Potter! If I clean my room, my mom says she'll make me a dinner a wizard would love!" Proud Gryffindor; don't hate.