J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book saga, has been unmasked as the author of a new detective mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling. She wrote it under the pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, hoping to escape inevitable comparisons between her youth series and her adult fiction. Her first adult novel The Casual Vacancy, hadn’t fared well at the hands of the critics.
The Cuckoo’s Calling did get good reviews but sold only 1,500 copies. Then someone blew Rowling’s cover which she said she regretted. Writing under the name Robert Galbraith, she admitted had been “such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to published without hype or expectations and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.” (http://shelf-life.ew.com/2013/07/14/j-k-rowling-cuckoos-calling-author-reveal/)
Of course, being exposed had its compensation. The moment the true author of The Cuckoo’s Calling became public, sales of the novel shot up to number 3 on British Amazon, causing some to wonder if Rowling hadn’t caused the leak herself.
I hope she did. I’d like to think she played her cards well: that she reaped the rewards for her chicanery, which wasn’t the money, but the opportunity to leave egg on the faces of the critics who suggested that The Casual Vacancy proved she should stick to youth fiction.
With her latest success, Rowling has pulled off a good joke on the literary world and made one or two other points that may have been unintended: 1) that being a good writer doesn’t equate with success. And 2) that readers stick with what they know.
Now that Rowling has fooled her detractors, I’ll bet she’s laughing all the way to the bank. Clever girl!
(Courtesy of Wikipdia.com)
