Meet the author - in her cyberspace chamber of secrets

The next instalment of the series will really be called Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, revealed on the author’s own homepage. With the kinetic rise of such author-approved websites doing good business, readers can now surf a heady wave of interaction that lets them get closer to the writers they love. Toni Morrison, Terry Pratchett, Isabel Allende, Margaret Atwood - they all have one.

You can visit home-grown talent at www.ianrankin.net, to find out which football team Rebus supports (Dunfermline, and sometimes Raith Rovers, apparently), or log on to www.irvinewelsh.net to read Leith’s favourite schemie beg for some west-coast corporate sponsorship. "C’mon Tennent’s, don’t be such Weedgie stuffed shirts. No wonder Scottish and Newcastle along the road in cosmopolitan Edinburgh are laughing up their sleeves!"

So, with writers stepping out of the shadows, via chat rooms and question-and-answer sessions, it is an appropriate time to join the forum. Is this purely egotistical self-promotion or a genuine way to give something back to those who make the best-sellers?

Jairo Lugo, lecturer in media studies at Stirling University, thinks it’s a bit of both. "The websites are a good way to promote a book, but you cannot take your computer to bed like you do with a book. Stephen King tried to sell one of his books on line two years ago and what he did was put chapter by chapter on his website. He said to his readers that if they wanted him to continue writing on line then they would have to pay him for doing so. He went back to writing for a publisher, but I think it was still an important development. The market is demanding more from the author, that’s all."

Solitude has long been the domain of the author. Apart from the odd book festival, reading tour, or visit to Wigtown for a blether, an author is chained to his or her word processor and rarely, if ever, comes into contact with the outside world. Websites are a way of communicating with readers, of making a connection.

Critic and fan Nicholas Clee, editor of The Bookseller website, says: "Many authors who have any kind of popular audience have their own websites, so anything that brings an audience and a writer closer together has to be a good thing. Writing is a lonely profession. If you are lucky enough, you get to meet a few people and it gives you an opportunity to talk."

Even JK Rowling thought that until very recently www.jkrowling.com was stale. "It was a list of links to my publishers - boring, I think you will agree. So I thought I’d liven it up a little." Readers are now treated to detailed biographies, responses to rumours and news stories, and hints about future books.

The site clearly puts the fans first, as it sorts fact from fiction and fiction from, er, fiction. But cynics argue that such websites are simply marketing ploys by the publishers to pay for more trips to Gringotts.

Colman Getty, JK Rowling’s Edinburgh based PR company, disagrees. "It’s not a marketing ploy at all, as it was her personal choice to use her official website in order to communicate with Harry Potter readers, in her own words," a spokesperson said.

Clee adds: "Author sites are definitely worthwhile. What we thought might maybe happen to authors was that the internet would allow them to disintermediate themselves from their publishers, but if it’s going to happen then it’s along way off. People use the web for enhancement and for information."

So, the readers are happy, the authors are happier, and the publishers are still making lots of money. Only a fool wouldn’t log on. As for Harry Potter and the Pillar of Storge, well, who would believe such a stupid thing as that. Not me, that’s for sure. Ahem.