J K Rowling: The Curse of the Publisher's Hype

Katy Guest - The Independent - Sunday 30 Sept, 2012

And so, this was it, the publishing event of the century: J K Rowling and the Publisher's Hype. The story had everything. The one million pre-orders. The profile in The New Yorker. The adulation! The vilification! You'd never guess that all Rowling did was write a book.

Reviews of The Casual Vacancy were strictly embargoed until its publication on Thursday, and, in the absence of a book, much of the criticism focused on Rowling's politics, her refusal to give interviews, her giving too many interviews, and the embargo itself. One newspaper accused her of hypocrisy, and her PR campaign of gagging the media (although not The Independent on Sunday, of course, which said no thanks to signing the embargo).

At the Waterstones store I went to on Thursday morning, there were no eager readers queuing up to buy Rowling's new novel. In this, it did not resemble a Harry Potter publication day. This may be because dressing as a wizard and camping outside a bookshop until midnight is more fun than stopping at a bookshop on the way to work dressed up as a town planner; or it may be because this is not a children's book. One million adults chose to pre-order The Casual Vacancy, even though they were not allowed to know in advance if it was any good. For all they knew, the book may have had just the words "Fooled you!" stamped through it like a stick of rock, but it was their £20 and their choice – not the moral equivalent of selling drugs to children.

Full story at The Independent