I’ve only dipped my toe into Pottermore, which I finally got access to this morning. Actually, I didn’t find out about it until I got to work this morning. So there I am, overwhelmed with stuff to do and looking at a busy week ahead of me, and now they decide to give me access? Murphy (of Law fame) is obviously their head membership bigwig.
Anyway, the website is down for the moment, so I thought I’d record a few initial impressions. The main one which is, the “new content”? LOL, I will bet all my sickles and knuts the “new content” is coming straight out of Rowling’s old story notes and discarded word count. Any writer (even me of overwriting fame) has a ton of content they wrote way back when that didn’t make it into the final draft, not because it wasn’t good, or relevant, or “the wrong direction for the story”, but just because it was tangential, or background information. Or became tangential/background info as the plot of the story developed.
So how much of this “new” content is new from Rowling’s POV? Probably none of it. But as someone who enjoys deleted scenes on DVD extras, and writer/director voice-over versions of movies/episodes explaining their creative process, I vote this “pretty darned cool.”
ETA: And now that the site’s back up and I’ve read along a little further, I have found the page where she admits to all this. ; )
Author Nancy E. Shaffer 
I’ll be psyched to see the new content anyway. I don’t care if it’s only new to us and not to her. It makes sense that she couldn’t have put every single detail that was in her head into all the books. She managed to put enough in to make them doorstoppers anyway.
I didn’t get early admission to Pottermore, so I’ll have to register when it opens for everyone like a pleb.
No, it truly is cool, ’cause it’s new to us, and as a writer, I can appreciate all that stuff that she had to cut out, or her thought processes behind how certain things came about in the story. That’s a treasure-trove for me.
As I said, I tried the site and didn’t like it. And you have to search for and click on just the right thing to get access to the “new” content. Given how unresponsive the screens are, this is not good.
All the new content has been open to me if I get to the end of the chapter. So far, I’m enjoying it. Enough to distract from the original writing I’m supposed to be doing right now.
Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying it.
It sounds pretty cool to me. I’m always interested in the stuff that gets left out of the story.
I might meta on some of it if it’s interesting enough. Just as an exercise in comparative writing processes.