“Alohomora!” J.K. Rowling's Pottermore website to keep the world of Harry Potter alive on digital has finally opened its e-bookstore.

While Rowling's books have sold an estimated 450 million physical copies and been translated into more than 70 languages, the author had retained the digital rights as part of her book publishing contracts, so the e-book editions weren't immediately available — until the Pottermore (think "Potter" plus "ever more") digital brand extension plan was announced last June. Already, Slate is calling it a game-changer for publishing.Continue reading...

Most authors are content to toil away on their work just hoping for commercial success in the conventional sense. Getting a book published would be nice, for instance. But a select few have created not only tomes but also expertise, a niche, a media presence and a brand that they can take to the bank in all sorts of different ways.

J.K. Rowling created that sort of property with the Harry Potter books. And Heidi Murkoff is a virtual best friend to legions of pregnant (especially first-time) moms thanks to the What to Expect When You're Expecting series, whose flagship title is now in its fourth edition.

A movie of the same title is due out on May 18th, starring Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Matthew Morrison, Anna Kendrick, and Chace Crawford (watch preview clips above and below). And in another extension of the What to Expect brand, mass merchandiser Sam's Club has produced a line of WTE-branded baby products, while Murkoff has signed on to write for every issue of Sam's new bimonthly magazine.Continue reading...

According to the latest 2012 State of the News Media report from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, 2011 truly marked the tipping point for a new era of digital media consumption and sharing.

In the new "new media" landscape, Pew's landmark annual consumer research underscores the widening gap between the news and technology industries as a small, powerful group of digital behemoths increasingly consolidate and control our digital lives and become media titans in their own right.

“Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and a few others are maneuvering to make the hardware people use, the operating systems that run those devices, the browsers on which people navigate, the e-mail services on which they communicate, the social networks on which they share and the web platforms on which they shop and play,” says the study.Continue reading...

“Huffington.” is the latest mobile app from AOL, highlighting the best of the Huffington Post – and yes, the period is part of the name, just as AOL rebranded to "Aol." with a period. At the helm of the iPad magazine is Tim O’Brien, Huffpo’s executive editor, lured from the New York Times two years ago to manage the brand’s original journalism.

The news app will be free, at least for now, published weekly, largely based on HuffPo’s blend of original journalism and aggregated news, with some specifically commissioned stories — and, of course, leverage the personal brand of Arianna Huffington and the flagship Huffington Post website she sold to AOL last year.Continue reading...

In a milestone of digital dominance in the publishing industry, Encyclopaedia Britannica will cease publication in print and move entirely to digital.

It’s been a good (print) run for the Encyclopædia Britannica (Latin for "British Encyclopaedia"), the oldest English-language encyclopaedia still around, first published between 1768 and 1771 in Edinburgh, Scotland in three volumes.Continue reading...

Six journalists, including Rebekah Brooks, the flame-haired former chief of News International, and her husband Charlie have been arrested in the ongoing investigation of the phone-hacking scandal that rocked the UK when Brooks was arrested for the first time last July.

The new arrests in that same investigation opened those wounds anew, even while Brooks and her husband have reportedly been released on bail.Continue reading...

Happy Quasquicentennial, Hearst! 125 years after what started in 1880 with the acquisition of the San Francisco Daily Examiner by American publisher and U.S. Senator George Hearst, the Hearst Media empire now spans more than 100 countries in 35+ languages. And if you were in New York on Monday evening you might have looked up and noticed that the Empire State Building was lit up in "Hearst blue" in tribute to Hearst's 125th.

The company's vast holdings today encompasses newspapers (Houston Chronicle, San Francisco Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Albany Times Union); magazines (Harper's Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, ELLE and O, The Oprah Magazine); TV broadcast stations and stakes in cable TV networks (Lifetime, A&E, History and ESPN); automotive, electronic, medical/pharmaceutical and financial information properties; digital and interactive marketing services; TV production; and real estate and other operations.

On March 4, 1887, Hearst turned the Examiner over to his 23-year-old son, William Randolph Hearst. By the 1920’s, one in four Americans read a newspaper he owned in chains that stretched from coast to coast.Continue reading...

Scholastic is going digital. The world's largest children's book publisher is digitizing the bulk of its titles and releasing its first e-reading app, called Storia. While many trade publishers are reaching 20% in digital revenue, the kids’ e-book market is stuck at about 5%, and Scholastic is eager to change all that.

The Storia app, free to download with a beta version available today, offers about 1,300 e-books and multimedia e-books with popular series including “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and “Ready, Freddy!” available in digital format for the first time. It's designed for children ages 3-14 and currently available for PC tablets, with versions for iPad and iPhone and Android devices coming soon.

According to PaidContent, Storia's titles can be sorted by grade level, reading level, age and character/series, and enriched e-books “use word games, story interactions, and animation to deeply draw your young reader in, further developing confidence and critical thinking skills.”Continue reading...