Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres
Try this scenario:
Rowling wanted to see how good a writer she is and how well her new mystery *series* might be received without her brand greasing the skids for her. So she wrote the book, likely *before* CASUAL VACANCY (these things take lots of time, plus she *said* she would be writing a mystery when Deathly Hallows came out) and then had her agent submit it under the pseudonym. (Without the agent *nobody* would have even read it.)
Months go by, she waits for somebody to pluck Robert Galbraith and, at best, gets rejections like the above (which translates as: "good read but unlikely to be the next 50 shades, oh so sorry".) and at worst she gets chirping crickets. (That's life for a talented writer waiting to be discovered and validated with a trad pub contract.)
Eventually, the agent (either with or without Rowling's consent) relaxes the rules and lets her editor at Little, Brown in on the exercise. (Or, said editor just coincidentally likes Galbraith's work enough to champion his "quiet" book. More likely: the editor recognized Rowling's writing, coming through the same agent and all...)
So, the book goes out as a debut by an unknown and, like 99.999999% of unknown writers, receives minimal support (not expected to be a bestseller without her brand attached) and sells slowly. (BTW, her 500 pbooks a month average is actually pretty good under the circumstances.)
Now, what is unknown at this point is how many at the publisher knew wrote the book and what kind of plans (read: print runs) they had for it. They may have chosen to honor her intent and treated it exactly like any other midlist newcomer (5-figure print run) or they may have expected or planned for what happened and prepared several warehouses full of copies, waiting for her to be outed.
If the pbook pipeline is quickly filled with millions of copies in response to the outing, then it will be clear the knowledge went deep and the plan to out her (willingly or not is unclear) was part of the reason Little, Brown took on the book. At which point it will be fully clear to Rowling that, while she is indeed a good enough writer to make the ranks of the midlist on merit, what most peope are buying is her brand, not the book. Which is nothing shameful since she built that brand honestly through hard work and business savvy.
It's an interesting experiment but until we know exacty who knew what when we can't pass judgment. It might all be just an elaborate publicity scheme or an experiment that ran its course, but I at least don't believe that her outing was anything but a publisher orchestrated move; there is simply too much money at stake for them to let her stay anonymous for long.
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Generally speaking, that probably doesn't work as most publishers insist on "right of first refusal" with "next book." Now, she has the power to have that taken out of a contract, but if it's in there, she would have had to submit it to her current publisher first. Of course she might have done so with the fake name...and they might have turned it down, which would be even more amusing...although might get her in some legal trouble. Then again, I doubt the contract specified she had to use her own name.