We know you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but what about by its spine? On the Scholastic “On Our Minds” blog, Jessica writes about the common misconception that kids won’t read books that are too lengthy. But she notices there is significant evidence that this is a misconception. Look at some of the titles being read by kids and teens.  Besides the Steve Jobs book weighing in at 656 pages, the smallest book in the Twilight series clocked in at just fewer than 500 pages.  The rest of them were bigger.  The...

Pottermore has a 17-question survey for Harry Potter fans, asking about what Potter books they’ve read and own, what e-readers they use, and how interested they would be in buying Harry Potter e-books and audiobooks. As Laura Hazard Owen notes at PaidContent, one of the questions asks what could keep fans from buying the Potter books, and one of the choices is not having a credit or debit card. This suggests that Pottermore may come up with a way of letting parents add money to children’s accounts so they can buy the books they want. But I...

The Bookseller reports that the Pottermore website has postponed the release of the Harry Potter e-books until the first half of 2012. The site’s web shop will now open in 2012 instead of early October as previously planned. Pottermore is also extending the beta-testing period of the website, and will now open registration to new users at the end of October....

More details are coming out about Sony’s latest entry into the e-reader market, the T1. At 168g (5.9 oz), the device is touted as the lightest e-reader ever, with a 6” touchscreen display, stylus, and built-in wi-fi access. The wi-fi will allow purchases from Sony’s on-line bookstore, and also borrowing e-books wirelessly from libraries that support it. The US cost of the device will be $149. Available in red, white, and black colors, the black version (but not the other two) will include a coupon for a free download of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone “while supplies last”....

Ah, the term “game changer”. It gets bandied about a lot, whenever something comes along that’s so new and different that it…well…changes the game. I’ve used it myself, in reference to Apple’s iPod Touch. The latest game changer, according to the children’s publishing industry, is J.K. Rowling’s site Pottermore. By combining e-book sales with a virtual world, it offers an entirely new way to market e-books, and one that looks as though it could be wildly successful. An article on The Bookseller seems to think there’s something particularly special and attractive about virtual worlds. ...

That's what The Register is reporting. The bespectacled wizard debuts in digital format in October – the same time as the Sony-sponsored Pottermore "online reading experience" goes live – according to well-placed sources in the vendor's retail channel. But for richer Potterites who can hang fire for a month, a second bundle will be released including all seven books in the series, a letter from author JK Rowling, subscription to Pottermore and a themed carry case. ... The package is being hailed as the "hero" product – the biggest seller – for Christmas by some in the retail channel. Sony confirmed...

Ebooknewser reports that the Harry Potter website Pottermore has begun running a contest to give some few lucky fans beta access to the site (scheduled to launch officially in October). The contest takes the form of a once-a-day trivia question, which will be posted at a random time throughout the day. The first few fans to supply the answer each day will be allowed in early. I look forward to being able to try the site out myself, but am more or less resigned to waiting for October....

Sometimes it can be fun to watch expert prognosticators go back and recount the mistakes they have made. Mike Shatzkin has a post like that, focusing on two predictions he made that, in retrospect, turned out not to be valid. Shatzkin got into e-books at about the same time and in the same way I did: reading them on his Palm Pilot back in the late 1990s. He watched the first few waves of dedicated e-readers fail miserably, and concluded that people simply wouldn’t be interested in reading on a device too large to fit in a hip pocket....

Those worried that Kindle owners might be left out in the cold by Google’s partnership with Pottermore for Harry Potter e-books no longer need worry. On PaidContent, Laura Hazard Owen reports that an Amazon spokesperson told them that Amazon is working with Pottermore, too. Indeed, Owens reminds readers, Rowling said from the first mention of Pottermore’s e-book sales that she would be making the e-books available in as many DRM-free (albeit watermarked) formats as possible, so everyone would be able to read them in their own format of choice. Just because there have been a number of prominent exclusive...

Update 21 July 2011: It appears that Google Books is not going to be the only partner for U.S. ebook sales, but rather one partner among others. Original post follows. A new blog post from Google today says that the company will be handling J.K. Rowling's Pottermore.com ebook sales for U.S. customers, and that Google Checkout will be promoted (worldwide?) as the primary way to pay for things on the site: "Also under this agreement, Google Checkout will be the preferred third party payment platform for all purchases made on Pottermore.com. When you visit the Pottermore Shop, you’ll be able to pay...

A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman looked at fan fiction: the history of fanfic, the fanfic community, what drives fans to write or read it, and authors’ attitudes toward it. Unlike a lot of fanfic pieces, it takes the time to explore the subject in detail—even if the focus is not necessarily the best. The article is a bit overblown in places (I will admit, I cringed at its contention, “Fan fiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped...

PaidContent reports on a Harry Potter multimedia e-book app from ScrollMotion, Harry Potter Film Wizardry, that at $12.99 is one of the more expensive book apps in the iPad store. Timed to coincide with the release of the latest movie, it includes behind-the-scenes looks at the filming of the movies, trivia, and other information. Packed with multimedia, it takes up almost 1 gigabyte of device space. Despite the price, it comes in at #3 in the iPad Book Apps store. But as big as the Harry Potter fandom is, this really isn’t a great surprise. Though I haven’t looked...