JKR's Pottermore & Sony Reader - what is going on?

JK Rowling's Pottermore was scheduled for launch last October, with the long awaited ebooks available to meet the Christmas market. Hundreds of thousands of children would find a Sony Reader pre-loaded with Harry Potter plus extra bits in their Christmas stockings. The launch was postponed. Since then, a strange silence has settled over the whole topic. Google Pottermore, and all the entries date from June 2011. Has someone cast a Disillusionment charm, an Impediment Jinx or pronounced Colloportus?

On behalf of my blog readers, I decided to investigate. First stop was the Pottermore website, still in beta. Not much to see for non-members, but if you go here it's clear just how many people are involved in the enterprise. Next stop Pottermore Insider, the site blog. Oddly, none of the posts have dates, only times, though you can tell from the sidebar the last four posts are December's. I liked the posts about designing the House Crests. No information about when the site will exit beta and the ebooks become available. No updates or press releases.

What has this hiatus meant? First, it's enabled Amazon to consolidate Kindle's lead position among ereaders; they've brought out the affordable Kindle 4, the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Fire, and have been selling a million a week this month. Amazon's clever online store and wireless delivery are a hard act to beat. Sony's Reader (which must have been counting on the USP of offering access to the world's best-selling series of books) has lost ground it will never recover.

Second, a canny operator like JKR has made the classic mistake of creating a demand and failing to meet it. The black market has stepped in. For those who don't care about copyright, the ebooks of Harry Potter are out there, readily available and free, in the format of your choice.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS! and thanks to all my readers