LONDON, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 27: Author J.K. Rowling attends photocall ahead of her reading from ‘The Casual Vacancy‘ at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on September 27, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)
What do you do if you’re a world famous author whose writing is inseparably connected with a certain brand? A horror writer who wants to know if his success is due to talent or luck? A writer of teen fantasy involving a school for child wizards who wants to explore her abilities without the help of fans who will buy anything with her name on it?
Well, you make up a new name, of course.
The first is Stephen King who, in an effort to find out if he had been lucky or if he had real skill manufactured the pen name Richard Bachman (a nod to crime author Donald E. Westlake‘s long-running pseudonym Richard Stark and, more obviously, perhaps Bachman-Turner Overdrive), getting away with it for several novels before he was found out. Initially, he released the books with as little marketing as possible to “load the dice” against Richard Bachman and see how he did. As soon as someone figured out who Bachman really was, though, sales rocketed and the game was over.
The second author is J.K. Rowling (if you couldn’t tell).
This weekend, it came out that J.K. Rowling had published a well-reviewed mystery novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling
How did it go down? Simply, The Cuckoo’s Calling was well reviewed, but perhaps a little too good for a first time novelist. Then, looking a little closer, it was noticed that the Galbraith had the same agent and the same publisher as the world famous Rowling…
Here’s a timeline from Vulture.com:
• On Thursday, an employee at the Sunday Times tweeted praise for The Cuckoo’s Calling, remarking that it didn’t seem like the work of a novice.
• “After midnight she got a tweet back from an anonymous person saying it’s not a first-time novel — it was written by J. K. Rowling,” the Sunday Times arts editor, Richard Brooks, explained.
• When the employee tweeted “How do you know for sure?” the mysterious tweeter replied with “I just now” and went on to delete his or her account.
• Brooks decided to investigate a little before trying to get confirmation from Rowling’s publisher, out of fear the story would leak to a competitor.
• Brooks first did some Internet snooping and found out that The Cuckoo’s Calling shared an agent, publisher, and editor with Rowling’s last book, The Casual Vacancy. He found it peculiar that the editor, David Shelley, would work both with giant star Rowling and some nobody named Galbraith.
• Brooks started reading the book: “I said, ‘Nobody who was in the Army and now works in civilian security could write a book as good as this.’”
• He then sent a copy of Calling, Vacancy, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to a pair of computer linguistic experts, who found major similarities. Namely the use of Latin phrases and a drug-taking scene.
• By Friday night, Brooks decided he had enough info to pull the trigger and asked Rowling’s people outright: “I e-mailed a blunt question: ‘I believe that Robert Galbraith is in fact J. K. Rowling, and will you please come back with a straightforward answer?’ ”
• Saturday morning, a spokeswoman for Rowling confirmed it.
Naturally, sales of the book jumped from a 1,500 total copies sold to number one on Amazon over night.
Will you read it?
Related articles
- J.K Rowling Uses Invisibility Cloak To Write A Book, Says Something Without Saying Anything (thereeltimes.com)
- J.K. Rowling Secretly Published A Crime Novel Under The Name Robert Galbraith (pinkisthenewblog.com)
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