The Cuckoo's Calling: Robert Galbraith is J. K. Rowling

Image Courtesy: Yahoo.com

For an indie author like me, selling 500 books in four months is as incredibly successful as 450 million copies for a bestselling author. Perhaps, for Robert Galbraith too, this was a good number. But for J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter books, “fewer than 500” as the Telegraph reports it, was a slow start of her book sales.

No one knew that the author of The Cuckoo’s Calling is J. K. Rowling, until a couple days back. Once the news is out, the book’s sales had gone high, and it is touching the zenith, as always happens with Ms. Rowling.

Robert Galbraith’s sales were not much, compared to what one expects from someone publishing under the banner of a well-established house. Fewer than 500 is not a good sign at all. The Rowling revelation has triggered frenzy, no doubt. Book reviewers, and bloggers, now have to say The Cuckoo’s Calling is J. K. Rowling’s latest adult fiction. Her fictional journey has taken a new step, a real-life example of literary witchcraft, with The Cuckoo’s Calling. 

According to newspapers, even the editor and the writer who wrote the blurb for The Cuckoo’s Calling did not know the real identity of the author. All of them were told that the author was a retired army officer, writing from his own experience, a crime novel. Many compared the novel with P. D. James’s literary style and accepted the debutante was talented. Little did they knew, the wizard behind the book would be the most successful author on planet earth—J. K. Rowling.

 

Image Courtesy: Yahoo.com

A message, invariably, unfolds through these events. This is what happens to a new author without a unique selling point. We also learn that a well-written novel may not be a noticeable one. For that status, it has to have a sensational content, a marketable angle. This, The Cuckoo’s Calling lacked, conspicuously, until, of course, the Ms. Rowling stepped in.