Monday, July 15, 2013

J.K. Rowling...

It's weird how much fuss people are making about J.K. Rowling...oops, I mean Robert Galbraith.

What Rowling did is actually fairly common. The Rowling "brand" is associated with quirky YA fantasy. Many authors who decide to write a series in a completely different style and genre will choose to do so under a pseudonym. It has to do, more than anything else, with reader expectations. Avoiding hype is a very secondary reason.

"Robert Galbraith" is a brand - one that will develop its own expectations over time and, eventually, it won't matter that we know who it is. It allows Rowling to establish these books as separate from everything she has done before.

It's not at all as uncommon a move as people seem to think - in fact there's nothing odd about it at all.

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