The Pottermore blog has been updated with a few questions and answers sent to them by fans. Read all the answers here and a select few below:

Can you please explain what you mean by ‘online reading experience’? How much will I, as a Pottermore user, be able to affect the story? After all, hasn’t Harry’s story already been told?
The best way to think of Pottermore is as an interactive, illustrated companion to the books. J.K. Rowling wanted to create a site where her stories could live on and where readers could explore them in a new way. In addition to discovering new material from J.K. Rowling about Harry’s world, you’ll be able to interact with key story Moments (the Sorting Hat sequence, for example) and upload your own comments, thoughts and artwork for all the characters, objects and places that you come across.

Once I’ve been sorted, will I be able to change houses?
J.K. Rowling has created a series of questions for the Sorting Hat, and how you answer these questions will determine which of the four houses you’ll be in. Once you’ve been sorted, you won’t be able to change; the Sorting Hat’s decision is final!

This morning Pottermore opened its own official blog to keep fans updated on the progress of the website. The first entry reads:

Welcome to Pottermore’s official blog, the Pottermore Insider.

Written by members of the Pottermore team, the Insider is here to bring you the latest news and updates on all things Pottermore, and to answer any questions you may have.

We’ll be here with you as we get ready for 31 July, and we’ll be posting fairly regularly, so remember to check back every now and then, or add us to your RSS feed so you don’t miss out on anything.

Today we have a really fun preview of Pottermore to enjoy! It takes a look at Chapter 6: ‘The Journey From Platform Nine and Three-Quarters’ from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone! To view the preview head over to the gallery!

Thanks to The Leaky Cauldron we have a full transcript from the Pottermore press conference held today. To read the full transcript you can visit this page (or the previous link to Leaky).  You can watch the video of the press conference here.

Q: Can you talk about your decision to go directly to the consumers? I imagine Apple and Amazon are not happy.
“Well I can’t speak for anyone else. The decision was  quite straightforward for me. Firstly It means that – I mean Harry Potter is obviously an international phenomenon and it means that we can now see that people everywhere are having the same experience at pretty much the same time. A large part of the fandom will be able to receive experience at exactly the same time, which was extremely appealing to me.
“I’m phenomenally lucky in that I have the resources to do it myself and therefore I got to do it, I think, right. I think this is a fantastic and unique experience that I can afford in every sense. To take my time and find the right people – TH_NK have been extraordinary – to make this come alive. There was really no other way to do that, for the fans or for, than to just do it myself. Not everyone could do it, I appreciate that, but I think it was right for Harry Potter. It was right for Harry Potter because, Potter fandom was one of the first, I think ti’s fair to say, there was a massive online community and that was such fun for me as an author to be able to have direct contact with my fans, and I already had a direct presence online, I had my own web site already. So it didn’t feel like a massive onwards step. It was an extension of the already existing.

A video for the Pottermore Press Conference held earlier today is now online and may be watched below! For all the news on Pottermore visit this page which will show you all the posts tagged with Pottermore.

Thanks to HPANA for the tip!

Thanks to SnitchSeeker we have a bunch of photos from the Pottermore press conference that was held this afternoon in the UK. View them all in the gallery!

Also, Scholastic has released a statement about Pottermore which you can read below:

Scholastic is proud to be a key partner in the Pottermore project, including connecting teachers and parents from our school and online channels directly to ebook sales via Pottermore and providing marketing and promotion support. We’re excited about the new content from J.K. Rowling to go along with the books. This will surely inspire more interest in the series and bring a whole new generation of readers to Harry Potter. We’re pleased to support Pottermore because we know the power of the Harry Potter books to turn kids into lifelong readers, and we believe every child should experience Harry Potter – whether in ebooks or in print. In addition, Scholastic will receive a royalty on sales of the U.S. editions of the ebooks.