Many of you I’m sure remember “Emma Watson Empire”. For nine years it was one of the big Emma Watson sites until it suddenly closed in Spring 2011. EWE was a competitor of Emma-Watson.net, but still, it was a sad day when I found out it was gone.
You may also recall Thomas Sailer who joined EWE and within a few months progressed to be the site representative. He worked hard to keep the site active, organizing fan projects and updating the site. During his 6 years at EWE Thomas was also actively supporting Harry Potter fans, founding “Knightbus.org”, an HP link archive, and the ‘International Network of Harry Potter Websites’. Thomas has now released a book of his experiences with Emma Watson Empire and the HP Fandom and how it influenced his life.
Chronik eines Harry Potter Fans (Chronicles of a Harry Potter Fan) is written in German. More information on the book and links to order the book through Amazon.de are on Thomas’ site.
The Austrian writer Thomas Sailer, a longstanding Harry Potter Fan, has published his third book “Chronik eines Harry Potter Fans“ (Chronicles of a Harry Potter Fan) just a few days ago.
For many years, beginning in spring 2005, he was active in the virtual Harry Potter fan community: He started helping out on ‘Emma Watson Empire’ and advanced, from a normal site visitor, to the site’s representative just within a few months.
Two years later he founded the Knight Bus, world’s most likely biggest Harry Potter link archive. And finally, he started an organisation called ‘The international network of Harry Potter Websites’: His attempt to get the worldwide fandom to collaborate and to keep it in one piece after the release of the final Harry Potter movie.
In this book he talks about his activities and inducements, as well as the influence which the Harry Potter story had on his life.
More Information
That’s really awesome but I really want to say that the Harry Potter story already has infuence on millions of people.
Wow. This books sounds really interesting and cool to read. I will definitely try to buy this book later in the future on amazon.
Well I have to say I used to like EWE. I visited it around 6-9 years ago, but the admins got too posh so I stopped visiting it. I don’t really get it why he has to publish his story except for making money. There are millions of Harry Potter fans, we all could do that.
I don’t really see an audience for this book either. But there’s money in everything, it seems. 😉
Well then he could write about keeping big sites run.
Ah that comment should be for Scarlett, sorry.
This. If he wanted to specifically reach out to people who wanna know how to run a website, he should have selected a different title. The way it is now he seems to cash in on the fact that us HP fans are an emotional lot (and aren’t we!)
The book seems to be about big Harry Potter Websites. Sheila, not many fans can say that they were leading members of huge, renonwed websites.
And Sacred_Path, did you consider that the author might be an emotional fan himself? Why else should he publish his book in German then if he’s obviously able to use English? Not quite the best way to cash the fans, eh?
I’m sorry, but have you read the news properly? This book seems to be about keeping big fansites run. I don’t think there are too many people who can seriously write about that.
That question works the other way around too. Why didn’t he write in English, when he obviously wants to sell copies? We’ll never know. He might be emotionally invested in the HP scene, but like it has been said, there are many people for whom this is equally true.
I wasn’t here for several years, but i still remember Emma. Today I saw lots of her new pictures and fotos. She have grown up and really beautiful. Dook, I even remember you. Where are the old layouts of the site?))))
Welcome back Roman. I do think about making a page with all the old layouts, but some I would have to hunt for. Maybe one of these days.
I have a question for the webmaster or any of the staff working on this website: why do I see 10 comments on this topic when it is only 4?? *confused*
Only the first comment in a thread gets a number, but for the count of comments it includes the replies.
And he really is from Austria? Not Australia? I wasn’t even aware that we had such Hardcore-Harry-Potter-Fans here… That’s really cool. 😀 Sounds like he had a great impact on the online HP community.
Oh yes, Hemma, we have…… I think he is from Eisenstadt (Burgenland) and I am from Klagenfurt (Kärnten)…..
Carinthia ftw!! 😀 Bin Oberkärntnerin. 😉
Btw, I love your name, Jonny Carinthia! ^^
Good to know that there are some Carinthians who don’t shun Harry Potter!! 🙂
Great news! Love it….. If you like try to find me on FB….
Yeah, german!
Thank you dook.