Here is what £100m can buy you? A small island off the coast of South America. A luxury home in the heart of Silicon Valley. Waterstone's (twice over). Bloomsbury Publishing.

But £100m for the digital rights to the seven Harry Potter books? The rights are certainly on the market, but as one person who has knowledge of the discussions told me of the reports emanating out of Scotland this week: "That's a load of crap."

We first reported that J K Rowling had begun to seriously consider e-books last year. It was not well known then, but now is that her agent Christopher Little held on to the rights when Bloomsbury bought the print series in the 1990s.

The situation has not much changed since then. A deal is likely to be announced this year, possibly around the time of or slightly ahead of the release of the final film in July. As a more accurate report in the Guardian notes: "A date for the release of the most eagerly awaited ebooks of them all, JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, remains tantalisingly unconfirmed despite excitable reports in the Scottish media."

My understanding of any prospective deal is that it is more nuanced that the headlines suggest, with  no stand-out figures such as "£100m" for sub-editors of national newspapers to get excited about.

Neil Blair, partner at the Christopher Little Agency, told me last year that it was still in the "determining phase" of how to release the Harry Potter books digitally, but said the agency hoped to have something to announce before the final film was released in July next year.

Blair made it clear that Rowling did not want to cut anyone out of the digital loop. I think this means that Bloomsbury will be part of any deal, as will Scholastic (the US publisher), and possibly even Warner Bros (which makes the films). It could also include Google and Amazon, but I don't think the author is in the business of granting exclusivity to any one company, which would almost certainly disappoint her fans (and give rise to unfavourable headlines).

Blair told me at the time: "We are talking with everyone. What we've got to try and do is come up with an arrangement that suits everybody, and which makes the e-books available to as many people as possible globally."

The Christopher Little Agency does not need my advice, but reading between the lines, this looks like they should be looking at a wholesale arrangement with a global provider that can supply the books digitally to partners who can support the e-books on a local level. The partners would most likely be the current print publishers who have most to lose from any digital arrangements that don't include them. Thus any deal is more likely to look like a licensing agreement than a straight "rights" sale. It is also much more likely to follow the pattern of the Darren Shan e-book release (who is also represented by CLA, and simply did a deal with his print publisher) than the Catherine Cookson saga: these may now be backlist books but they remain very much at the front of their publisher's mind.

Still, the headlines are right about one thing: this is a big deal, and an important one, but not really for the reasons so far reported.