J.K. Rowling had a surprise for readers this weekend. She’s written a crime novel where it seems the real intrigue was the fact that she wrote “The Cuckoo’s Calling” under a pseudonym.

The Sunday Times broke the story.

Rowling’s authorship was revealed by The Sunday Times after it investigated how a first-time author “with a background in the army and the civilian security industry” could write such an assured debut novel.

“The Cuckoo’s Calling” came out in April to good reviews, although according to a report in The Telegraph, Neilsen Bookscan figures suggest that it sold just 449 copies prior to its author’s unmasking this weekend. (The book’s publishers, meanwhile, have claimed that hardback sales were closer to 1,500.)

Rowling added:

“I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience. It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”

Rowling is not the first big-name author to publish under a different name. The first example that comes to mind is Stephen King. He published seven books his Richard Bachman pseudonym, including “The Running Man.”

It’s not surprising to see an author to choose this route. A new name brings less expectations, and likely less pressure to live up to what die-hard fans expect from each new book.

As of right now, the book is ranked at 30,486 on Amazon. One can only wonder where it will jump once the news becomes more widespread.

One of my favorite lines in an Amazon review of the book states: “This book is so well written that I suspect that some years down the road we will hear the author’s name is a pseudonym of some famous writer.”

It only took a couple of months.

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  1. I think this would have been a much more interesting experiment on Rowling’s part if she *hadn’t* worked with her agent and her regular publisher, but had instead stayed anonymous from the beginning. (In other words, if she’d attempted to attract an agent and a publisher solely as “Robert Galbraith.”)

    Although, there is one aspect I’m a little confused about, and that actually has to do with the fact that she *did* go with her regular agent. Because here’s the thing:

    Other acquisitions editors are being quoted in the UK press, explaining why they chose not to acquire the book. So did Rowling’s agent maybe, in fact, shop the manuscript around before telling anyone who actually wrote it? And after it was turned down, did the agent maybe then share the identity of the *real* writer with Rowling’s regular publisher, who then chose to publish it?

    I’m not really speculating, by the way. I’m just curious to know if anyone out there happens to know the inside baseball behind the manuscript’s acquisition process.

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