Hiding from Harry Potter: The Pseudonym’s Calling

by Kate Carroll, Editorial Assistant


If you’re not a mystery lover or a shelf browser who gives new authors a try, would you purchase a debut mystery novel from an author named Robert Galbraith? Would you even pick it up to browse? What if it turned out that this new author, supposedly a former member of the Royal Military Police, was actually the beloved J. K. Rowling?

In what has been called “the best act of literary deception since Stephen King was outed as Richard Bachman back in the 1980s,” the recent discovery that the creator of Harry Potter had published The Cuckoo’s Calling under a different name back in April has shocked fans, publishers and booksellers alike.

For a debut novel in a specific genre, sales of The Cuckoo’s Calling were respectable at approximately 1500 copies. After the news of the author’s identity broke, however, getting ahold of a first edition copy proved near impossible within a very short window of time. With physical copies so high in demand, many fans were turning to the ebook version, a necessity that allowed sales of the Amazon Kindle version to increase 158,000 percent in less than a 48-hour period. The hardcover sales also made the title an almost instantaneous bestseller for lists reported by both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Preorders for the reprint of the novel are widespread, although the new copies will contain an addendum about J. K. Rowling’s pseudonym, making the original printing rare and worth far more than the newer editions. The book was originally intended as a series, and Rowling appears to want to continue with the plan, regardless of being seemingly displeased with the unveiling of Galbraith’s identity by a member of the law firm she was using at the time.

However, in attempt to turn a disappointing situation into a celebration, Rowling decided to donate 100 percent of the settlement—or a “substantial donation,” as she’s calling it—from her lawsuit against the firm responsible for blowing her cover, as well as the net royalties from the book sales, to charity. In tribute to Galbraith’s faux military background, Rowling has selected The Soldier’s Charity to receive this major contribution. Over the next three years the charity will receive every penny of the royalties intended for the author, beginning with sales dating from July 14th, the day Galbraith’s true identity was revealed.

When the sales numbers pre- and post-reveal are compared, the wonders of the publishing industry are revealed. Rowling’s decision (as well as the decisions of King and countless others) to use a pseudonym displays just how much hype a name can create, a phenomenon that must affect the author’s idea of self-identity: Is Rowling a writer or a celebrity? The pseudonym certainly gave her a reminder of the difficulties of entering into the publishing world, and a glimpse at the realities of a new author’s struggle to succeed in the market despite good reviews.

In other circumstances, would The Cuckoo’s Calling ever have realistically earned a sequel . . . a series? We will never know. One thing for certain is that Rowling is blessed with a built-in audience, confirmed merely by the preorders for the novel’s reprint and presumably in the sales that will follow. How she morphed from a no-name author trying to sell a book about a young wizard to an international bestseller is one of the unanswerable questions of publishing. It’s that magic touch that all first-time authors hope they possess: the ability to capture an audience large enough to prevent them from remaining a needle in a haystack. A magic thousands may have never known existed between the covers bearing the unheard-of name Robert Galbraith.

Did You Know?
The use of male pseudonyms by female authors is nothing new—in fact, the Brontë sisters were some of the first to test the theory that writing under a male name sparks more interest in a wider audience. The three sisters penned poetry under male names, hoping to avoid bias toward “authoresses” . . . and publishers are still advising authors to choose names that ring more neutral in the gender department. J. K. Rowling, birthed Joanne Rowling, was suggested to choose two initials to use in place of “Joanne” as to be more appealing to young male readers. Other times, the advice is given to authors who want to jump between genres, such as when Nora Roberts, already famous for female-oriented romance novels, wanted to write detective fiction. Her publisher was reluctant to introduce her well-known name into another genre and suggested a pseudonym to help her break into the suspense novel genre dominated by male authors. More than 150 years after the Brontë sisters took on the names of “Ellis,” “Acton,” and “Currer,” Joanne Rowling saw it necessary to take it beyond the neutral “J. K.” initials and move to an unquestionably male name, all in hopes to free herself from the limitations of a celebrity author name and to join a genre dominated by men. (DYK by Emeli Warren)