What is the point of doing this? JK Rowling pseudonym but every review has her name on it anyway.

[SarahAndFuck]

JK Rowling has published a crime novel under a pseudonym and but every description of the book that I've seen has something like this -

"The Cuckoo's Calling is a 2013 crime fiction novel by J. K. Rowling, published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith."

• written on it so you know exactly who it's by.

Even more strange, right underneath all of that on Amazon, they give a fake biography of 'Robert Gilbraith' before saying the name is a pseudonym and after already telling us who the real author is.

I'm a bit baffled about why they would bother?

As far as I know it only came out that she was age author through a leak after review copies had been sent out so everyone quickly updated the websites.

They are all reviews written this week presumably. 4 days ago there was only 18 reviews on amazon, now there are 68

The point is

Step 1 - get some people to reject it

Step 2 - get it published

Step 3 - get reviews based on whether it is any good or not

Step 4a - IF there are good reviews, deliberately leak name

Step 5a - get loads of publicity based on the fact that Steps 1-3 happened ("OMG look at the state of publishing they rejected JK Rowling" vs "JK Rowling is good enough to publish even when we don't know it's her" vs "Look at how good the reviews are even when it's an unknown author")

Step 4b - IF the reviews are awful, don't ever leak it

I see.

I suppose it's like Stephen King as Richard Bachman. He managed to keep the secret a little longer and one reviewer of a Bachman book actually wrote something like "this is what Stephen King would write - if Stephen King could write."

It just seemed odd to me that Amazon themselves are stating it's her and still bothering to include the fake biography as well.

She sounds pretty angry about it here www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23366660

Can't believe she really wanted this Trills. I really wouldn't want to be the law company that leaked it - the wife that told her best friend - is her husband out of a job now?

SarahAndFuck I went on Amazon to read the reviews on sunday when the news broke and they were just about the Galbraith author then - but they want to sell copies so of course they've added all the JK Rowling stuff now. They sold thousands and thousands within hours.

Just off to collect my reserved copy from the library today, which I'm feeling very smug about!

That interview makes it a little clearer.

The first I had heard of it was two emails, one from Waterstones and the other from Amazon, both basically saying "The Cuckoo's Calling is out tomorrow, JK Rowling is writing as Robert Galbraith" so it all seemed very deliberate that they were marketing it right from the start with her name on it.

I hadn't thought about the advanced copies.

I wouldn't want to deal with that law company, knowing that they seem to think it's okay to break confidentiality as long as they trust the person 100%. Which he obviously couldn't.

What's that saying? Two people can only keep one secret if one of them is dead?

I got an email from Waterstones, but it said "the Cuckoo's Calling is in stock tomorrow" (or words to that effect).

Basically, it was published in April, with little publicity and presumably a very small print run of a few thousand copies. The first print run said "Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym," but not who for. (The conceit was supposed to be that he was using a pseudonym because of the line of work he had been involved in.)

The news leaked, and the books weren't available anywhere - Waterstones didn't have them in stock (it was on the news that a reporter had got his local branch to run a search and there was not a single copy in any branch of Waterstones in the country), Amazon didn't have them in stock...

The publishers had to rush out a new print run, and the second print run which is now in shops states "Robert Galbraith is a pseudonym for JK Rowling", but the first print run did not.