The official website of “Robert Galbraith,” JK Rowling‘s crime-writing alter ego, now includes a FAQ addressing many of the questions that have emerged since the Sunday Times unmasked her identity earlier this month. She wrote THE CUCKOO’S CALLING under a pseudonym because “I was yearning to go back to the beginning of a writing career in this new genre, to work without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback. It was a fantastic experience and I only wish it could have gone on a little longer.” Rowling says she had “labyrinthine plans…to conceal my identity” and “hoped to keep […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Briefs: Banks and Perseus Funds Sue Frank Pearl’s Estate; German Publisher Is Rowling Winner; And More
The estate of financier and Perseus Books founder Frank Pearl, who died in May 2012, is being sued by Bank of America, TD Bank, Eagle Bank and even Perseus Funds for more than $50 million, according to the Washington Post, alleging he “sought to avoid payment to creditors by fraudulently moving $59 million in life insurance proceeds and other assets from his estate into Perseus Trust, which he had created for his wife” after being diagnosed with terminal cancer in November 2011. Bank of America seeks $22 million; TD Bank and Eagle Bank are asking for more than $16 million […]
HOTHOUSE in the Hot Seat
Boris Kachka has covered the trade publishing beat for more than thirteen years at New York Magazine, and one could look at his forthcoming book Hothouse, which S&S will publish August 6, as a rite of passage akin to a Bar Mitzvah. The advance attention from booksellers and publishing types for the book, a history of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and the two figures, Roger Straus and Robert Giroux, who loomed largest over the publishing house’s six decades, has been almost uniformly rapturous, garnering the No. 1 slot for August’s Indie Next list. But Hothouse‘s predicament begins with its declaration […]
Books In the News: Cuckoo Denial; Inferno and Wild Movies; Dinkins’ Memoir
Little Brown UK told The Bookseller that “Robert Galbraith’s” THE CUCKOO’S CALLING had sold 1,400 print copies and 800 ebooks domestically, plus 2,000 export copies and 3,800 audio downloads. (That compares to under 500 hardcovers in the US.) The UK publisher is reprinting 140,000 copies. Rowling’s spokesperson felt compelled to formally deny involvement in the Sunday Times revelation, saying “it was not a leak or elaborate marketing campaign to boost sales.” Little Brown UK added their own denial, in almost the same words, saying it “was not a leak or part of a marketing campaign.” As for other big bestsellers, […]
Rowling Published This Spring Quietly As “Robert Galbraith”
JK Rowling has confessed that she authored the crime novel THE CUCKOO’S CALLING, published in April to at least some positive reviews and very modest sales (441 print units in the UK, and about the same in the US, as tracked by Nielsen Bookscan). Rowling was unmasked by The Sunday Times “after it investigated how a first-time author ‘with a background in the army and the civilian security industry’ could write such an assured debut novel.” Actually, as the paper’s books editor Richard Brooks admitted, columnist India Knight was first set on the story by an anonymous Twitter tip (from an account […]
The Book Attorney In This Town
Next Tuesday Blue Rider Press publishes reporter Mike Leibovich’s exuberantly bridge-torching account of the Washington, DC “media industrial complex” THIS TOWN, and you have probably seen extracts sprinkled liberally across preview articles. But those “nuggets” have focused on the political and journalism players, while most book publishing people will likely hone in on Chapter 2, which includes a look at Bob Barnett, “a single superlawyer cash redemeption center” who “can legitimize a person’s earning power just by representing him or her. This service to his country includes a strenuous ability to promote his clients in the media and an equally […]