J.K. Rowling Plays Games with the Media with Pottermore - Wall Street Journal (blog)

By Barbara Chai

The buzz surrounding J.K. Rowling's mysterious Pottermore website grew louder on Tuesday, when details about the venture leaked to The Times of London seemed to indicate that the coming project is an elaborate online game.

The memo reportedly outlined the Pottermore marketing strategy and suggested that the site is a game that contains clues to wands that are hidden in various places in the U.S., U.K., and possibly other countries, according to the Times.

The marketing behind Pottermore has turned into a strategic game in itself, and has been fueled by the excitement around the finale "Potter" movie, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2," due out next month.

J.K. Rowling is scheduled to make an announcement about Pottermore tomorrow morning at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Until then, it's difficult to say for certain whether these details are accurate (maybe it's that massive encyclopedia of the Potter universe we keep hearing about), complete (is the online game just one part of a larger project?), or if they were leaked intentionally (Rowling is a savvy marketer).

Kyle Good, who represents J.K. Rowling at Scholastic, her U.S. publisher, declined comment.