By now you've heard that J.K. Rowling published Cuckoo's Calling, a pulpy crime novel,
under the pen name "Robert Galbraith". It was a fascinating
experiment that I can't blame her for trying after how her A Casual Vacancy was received. There were unreasonable hopes that
the novel would be like Harry Potter, and a clear critical glee whenever it was
weak. There was a feeling of a ripe target, of somebody so widely beloved who
was now vulnerable and could be sniped at.
The Cuckoo's Calling
experiment is interesting to most because she wowed critics. Reviewers who
thought she was Robert Galbraith likened her novel to the bestsellers of the
field. It's only now that she's been outed that critics are putting the
knuckles to it.
It's more interesting to me because of its mediocre sales.
Released by Little Brown, the New York Times reported it moved barely 1,500
copies. Rowling has since taken to the web claiming sales were a little higher, but
like the depressing reports about how Pulitzer Prize nominees sold, this again
reveals how little critical praise can mean to the book-buying public. It feels
like someone in the law firm or publishing house outed her to sell more copies,
and indeed, they're now printing 140,000 copies to catch up with sudden demand.
That it sold so meekly makes some immediate sense: this is
another crime story, not a revolutionary YA phenomenon. And the author could
only promote it so much while hiding her identity. But it's still a sales
performance many self-published authors have trumped from the woman who has
unparalleled experience in the publishing industry. She's been privy to
information from publishers, distributors, and even transmedia corporations. While
the success of Harry Potter got much
bigger than her grasp, she likely knows how to get books into the hands of critics
and mavens (or knows the people who know how to).
There are two comforts in this story. One is that Rowling's
writing is at least a little vindicated by hoodwinking critics into giving her a
fresh analysis. Her trick reveals, once again, that expectations can rig the
game, and that that our baggage distorts.
It's also comforting to know that one of the richest authors
in human history can fall on her face when only quality of the work determines
its place in the market. Cuckoo's Calling
has been a critical success in crime fiction, but as a commercial mid-lister,
it reminds that all those struggling debut and self-publishing authors are up
against high adversity. It's easy to be chilled thinking our best work will be
ignored, but if you've spent any time in the industry, you already knew there
were severe odds. This affirms that every new face has to roll with those.
You're not alone.
When the current wave of joke and back-patting articles
subside, I imagine another wave of hindsighted visionaries explaining how
Rowling could have done this all better. What I'm really looking forward to,
though, is someone to write under a pen name and prove a theory of how a beginning
author can win. Rowling did it once, though it took quite a long time for the
spell to work.
I haven't read either Cuckoo's Calling or A Casual Vacancy, but intend to read both.
ReplyDeleteIt is dispiriting how few authors can make a living from their work. Authors and artists both. Severely undervalued (while alive anyway).
It does seem easier for the dead to make a living. Their overhead goes down, you know.
DeleteIf you're planning to read both, can you say which you'll try first? If you are leaning one way or the other. I'm actually not much of a Rowling fan, but have found recent years of her career very interesting.
At first I felt annoyed on her behalf that someone had outed her as the true author, seemingly just to sell newspapers (since I believe it was The Sunday Times who went digging) but I've also heard it was someone at the publisher who blabbed. Regardless of what happened, I can understand her wanting the freedom to write what she wants without Harry Potter peeping over her shoulder but she must have realised what would happen eventually, and I don't buy the fact that it's liberating to behave as a first time author again - first time authors are usually holding down another job to pay the bills, and they have the long hard slog to find an agent in the first place. If she'd literally started from scratch and tried shopping the book without using her current agent and publisher then I might have had more respect for the experiment.
ReplyDeleteI've seen a few writer compare this to querying, but that's not what she was experimenting about. Given that Harry Potter was rejected a dozen times, and agents still say they wouldn't have picked it up, I think she's already part of the narrative on the query process being ridiculous to authors. Here she was experimenting on critic/reader reception, not agent/publisher reception. Not that I'd be opposed to a second experiment about that.
DeleteIt's interesting how few copies sold before people knew it was her.
ReplyDeleteWhen I found out about this, I honestly didn't blame JKR for writing under a pen name. It blew my mind how many people griped about The Casual Vacancy not being Harry Potter. When wasn't it made clear? It's been interesting to read some of the articles about this. Of course, my opinion hasn't changed. I still don't blame JKR for writing this book under a pen name.
ReplyDeleteI read the book and thought it was an excellent Private Eye kind of story. Believe me, it is not a kid's book. Rowling understands the genre well.
ReplyDeleteThe book didn't have poor sales, not at all. Not for a first-time author selling in hardcover format, not for the time frame between the publication and the outing. That people even think the sales were poor shows how messed up expectations vs reality are for selling books. Harry Potter wasn't an overnight success either -- the first book gained success slowly before it hit critical mass or flash point or whatever you want to call it.
ReplyDeleteWhat's appalled me is how vile some of the hate on Rowling is out there. No wonder she chose to use a pen name.
I agree that expectations for new authors are very steep, including accentuating how much things sell in the first month. I didn't mean to imply that I wouldn't be happy with 1,500 copies (especially at that price), but I know plenty of debut pro-pub authors who got tackled for such performance.
DeleteSome are complaining that she didn't get the "whole new author experience" because she didn't run the whole query gauntlet again. But she's already been there. The huge advance telegraphed that Robert Galbraith was a pseudonym, but who cares? I'm ready to call it an experiment to see what kind of reviews she'd get for her writing w/o her name attached, and that was a success.
ReplyDeleteMaybe this is why publishers want to pigeonhole authors into a single genre.
I'm one of those people. If she wanted a true sense of how her work would be received sans Harry Potter baggage, she should have done the query gauntlet.
Delete"Robert Galbraith" (an unknown first timer in an overcrowded genre field) got to work with J.K. Rowling's agent and J.K. Rowling's publisher. Galbraith was wasn't even playing the game on the Easy setting; he was playing it on "Tourist".
The more I think about this, the less I can get behind this criticism. It's like accusing a study on whale phenotypes for not being about how to get funding. Rowling was experimenting with critics and sales, and I can't blame her for being more interested in those than a query process that already bounced her Harry Potter books numerous times. She has a baseline for unknown-author-gets-rejected. After A Casual Vacancy, I'd also wonder how another novel would be treated by the critical establishment if they didn't know it was me.
DeleteI like to imagine that J K Rowling is quite pleased. She got critical acclaim for the quality of her writing and its not like she needs to sell enough copies to cover the mortgage.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad how the guns came out for her though and I wonder if they'd have been so upset if this had been pulled by a man? Just a thought.
It's a valid question. I know Stephen King was tired of being worked over to the point where he adopted Richard Bachman, and I seem to recall media being pretty grey over the revelation around the Regulators/Desperation release. But if a man had written the YA phenom? It's valid.
DeleteThis is encouraging and scaring at the same time!
ReplyDeleteGreat points, all. The critics reactions were disturbing, lampooning her because she fooled them into actually, you know, READING her book rather than judging it by th author.
ReplyDelete