JK Rowling has been casting some magic spells again.  And this one was called “Pseudonymicus Invisiblistus!”

Here’s the cliff notes version of what happened:

• JK wrote a book called The Cuckoo’s Calling under the pseudonym, Robert Galbraith.
• The book got good reviews, but sold about a half dozen copies.
• JK was outed as the Author of The Cuckoo’s Calling.
• The book skyrocketed onto the Best Seller list, and sold a gazillion copies.

Apparently JK isn’t so thrilled about it and has been pretty adamant that the pseudonym and her unmasking was not a marketing ploy.  My thoughts?  Well, she doesn’t need the money, so I’m sure she doesn’t care if the book sat in a discount rack, but her publishers sure do.  I bet they let her publish under the pseudonym because it’s what she wanted.  And if it sold, great!  If it didn’t, well, they could also let out her dirty little secret and poof!  Best  Sellerus Statustiki and Cash-in-the-Bankerumptus!

So apparently, in the publishing world, what’s in a name can mean the difference between what sells and what doesn’t.

But does it mean something for what gets bought, or in our case, produced?

This CNN article about what happened to JK also tells the tale of Chuck Ross, a man who 35 years ago experimented by purposely plagiarizing a best seller, put it under his own name, and then submitted it to 14 publishing houses, including the house that published that same best seller.

It was turned down by every single one!

Read about it here.

Could this happen in the theater world?  Do you think if Evita or A Little Night Music was submitted today under an unknown author’s name and got to some ignorant reader’s desk, that it would get rejected?  What about The Homecoming by Pinter, or All My Sons?  

Our world has so few “best sellers” compared to the Publishing Mecca, that there’s probably no way to ever truly test this out.

But this story did make me think about pseudonyms, which is something you never, really ever, see in the theater.  Why not?  Well, for one, we usually need every bit of marketing power we can get, so we’re going to squeeze whatever juice we can out of that name, even if it’s only where that person went to college so we can get an article in the local gazette.  And two, our world is just too small and too “in-person” to ever keep that kind of secret.

But could some folks benefit from a pseudonym?  Maybe.  What about the oft-maligned (and many times, unfairly so) Frank Wildhorn?  Would one of his musicals, that crushes it overseas, have a better critical shot if reviewers here didn’t know it was him?  What about Adam Rapp who was told publicly by Charles Isherwood that he had no shot at getting a good review from him, based solely on his name?

Not sure a playwright will ever do such a thing, which I talk about in a similar pseudonymical article here.  And that’s why in 2013, every author out there, whether you’ve had a hit on Broadway or whether you’re still dreaming about having a hit on Broadway, must build value into their name if they want a long and lustrous career.  You want your career like the Cheers song:  where everybody knows your name.

Because all of these stories prove one thing, whether we like it or not.  

Shakespeare was wrong.  And he knew it (which is why R&J ended in such a tragedy).  

Unfortunately, when you’re selling something, and not smelling something, a rose by any other name isn’t as sweet.

 

(Got a comment? I love ‘em, so comment below! Email Subscribers, click here then scroll down to say what’s on your mind!)

_ _

FUN STUFF:

– Win two tickets to see Soul Doctor on Broadway!  Click here.

– Like the blog?  Like me on Facebook.  Thanks in advance.