As we posted yesterday, Bloomsbury announced that a new three-book boxed set related to the Potter series would be released this year.  Today the Bloomsbury Kids Twitter account revealed that it is a box set of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Quidditch Through the Ages, and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Click the image below to see a larger version.

So in our prediction yesterday we were pretty close, we thought it would be books like Fantastic Beats, but in fact it IS those, just re-released.

According to a new article on Reuters, Bloomsbury will be releasing a “new Rowling three-book box set tied into the Potter series” in the coming year.  This came along with the news of increased sales in their e-books department, which can be accredited to the release of the seven Harry Potter novels in the format.

This 3 book box set could be a myriad of things, but many fans believe it could possibly be the Harry Potter Encyclopedia.  This rumor, however nice it would be, conflicts with what JK Rowling recently posted on her website:

I have been enjoying sharing information about Harry’s world on Pottermore for free, and don’t have any firm plans to publish it in book form.

This could also be a set similar to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Quidditch Through the Ages. We won’t know for sure until Bloomsbury releases an official statement, o stay tuned for more news as it develops! Whatever it is we are sure fans will jump at the chance to own some more Potter-related books!

PFC Auctions, a boutique online auction business specialising in world class Art, Antiques and Collectibles,  is going to be auctioning two signed Harry Potter books. there is a copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets signed by Daniel Radcliffe and a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban signed by Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson. Both books are in pristine condition and bidding starts at £100 per book.

Online bidding at www.pfcauctions.com will end at 7:30pm BST on May 24 2012. To bid you need to register an account and get verified.

Amazon announced yesterday that they would be adding all seven Harry Potter books to their Kindle Library on June 19th.  The books will be available in English, German, Spanish, French and Italian!

They have also announced that users with Amazon Prime will be able to “borrow” the books for free as frequently as a book a month, with no due dates through the Lending Library, also starting on June 19th!

With Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, there are no due dates, you can borrow as frequently as once a month, and there are no limits on how many people can simultaneously borrow the same title – so you never have to wait in line for the book you want!

JK Rowling’s manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone is set to be exhibited at the British Library from 25 May and running until 9 September 2012. It is part of a larger exhibition entitled Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands and includes other visionaries, such as, John Lennon, JRR Tolkein, William Shakespeare and more!  The description of the exhibition is as follows:

[…] explores treasures from the last 1000 years of English literature that have been shaped by the country’s unique spaces and places. From idyllic rural landscapes to gritty cities, the exhibition will showcase a literary map of the British Isles and highlight how writers, from William Shakespeare and Walter Scott to John Lennon and J K Rowling, have recorded the changing spaces of the British Isles in some of their greatest literary works, and in turn inspired their readers to explore the country in new ways.

Named as one of the highlights of the exhibition,

the original manuscript for Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, lent by the author, describes Harry Potter’s first encounter with platform 9 ¾ in London’s King’s Cross station. Carefully avoiding the stopping trains via Cuffley and Bayford (strictly for Muggles only), he should pass between Platforms 9 and 10 to reach a magical passage to a fantastic parallel world. This manuscript is part of the exhibition’s ‘Cockney Visions’ section, looking at literature inspired by London.

The Bookseller has a new interview with Pottermore CEO, Charlie Redmayne, and he discusses the amazing interest in the Harry Potter eBooks which were released a month ago.  The books made £1 million in the first 3 days and £3m in the first month.  He also revealed that fans still have a ways to wait for Chamber of Secrets saying that it is still “weeks away.” They will, however, be adding new features to the site for fans to enjoy. “It’s a fantastic experience, but not yet as good as its going to be. We are working on book two now, I’m very pleased with some of the pages I’ve seen, and it will be coming as soon as possible.”

He has the following to say about the affect of the ebooks on piracy,

[…] sales of the physical copies of the seven titles had also increased, and that because of the site’s light-touch Digital Rights Management, piracy had diminished. “Obviously there were fears piracy would increase as a result of being DRM-free, and that sales of the e-books would cannibalise sales of the physical titles, but we were delighted to see sales of the physical books go up, and piracy come down.” Redmayne said that though there had been an increase in piracy immediately after launch, the community had rejected these illegal versions because of how the e-books were brought to market. “We have demonstrated that if you make these books available in the way that people want them, and on a platform that is accessible to them, and at a price they are happy with, then then generally people will chose to buy them.”

Of the weird launch time, Redmayne said: “Given how we launched it, at 8.15 in the morning when most people were asleep, almost anti-marketing it, we were very pleased. It has been amazingly successful and shows the power of the Harry Potter brand.” Some statistics on the site have also been revealed:

• Pottermore, the Harry Potter experience, has seen 22 million visits from 7 million unique users in its first two weeks, generating more than 1 billion page impressions, with the average user visiting 47 pages, spending 25 minutes on the site.
• Redmayne said there had been 4.2m attempts to make potions, with a success rate of just 32%.
• In those first two weeks there had been 39.9m “wizard duels” with the “full body bind” spell the most popular, and “pimple jinx” the least used.
• After two weeks 5m new users had registered, with perhaps half of those already sorted into houses, such as Gryffindor and Ravenclaw.