http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/books/a-detective-storys-famous-author-is-unmasked.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&smid=tw-share

It’s a mystery to me why J.K. Rowling wrote The Cuckoo’s Calling under a pseudonym.  And was it the combination of good reviews and sluggish sales that led to the anonymous tweet, tipping off the press?  Here’s what the NYT writes:

The story of how The Sunday Times uncovered the truth is an odd one that involves, as seems so often the case these days, Twitter. It started on Thursday, said Richard Brooks, the paper’s arts editor, after one of his colleagues happened to post a tweet mentioning that she had loved “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” and that it did not seem as if the book had been written by a novice.

“After midnight she got a tweet back from an anonymous person saying it’s not a first-time novel — it was written by J. K. Rowling,” Mr. Brooks said in an interview. “So my colleague tweeted back and said, ‘How do you know for sure?’  ”

The person replied, “I just know,” and then proceeded to delete all his (or her) tweets and to close down the Twitter account, Mr. Brooks said. “All traces of this person had been taken off, and we couldn’t find his name again.”

It is, of course, possible that the anonymous tweets were part of a sneaky campaign by the publisher to get the story out. But The Sunday Times’s curiosity was piqued, and Mr. Brooks decided to work surreptitiously at first, not alerting Ms. Rowling’s publisher or agent for fear of having the possible news leak to a competitor. 

And here’s a fairy tale sent to me by Michael Sims, author of the fabulous Story of Charlotte’s Web :

Cinderella had been queen a long time. She missed walking through the marketplace without people staring. She wanted to see if she could be loved for what she did without being recognized as the queen.

She succeeded in getting good reviews and had the experience that most writers have, of selling poorly and being largely ignored.

Then someone spoke aloud her magic name and all her riches materialized again.