- Whenever someone is phenomenally successful, whether it’s Rowling as an author, Bob Dylan as a musician or Steve Jobs as an innovator, we can’t help but conclude that there is something uniquely qualifying about them, something akin to “genius,” that makes their successes all but inevitable.
Even when we learn about their early setbacks -- Rowling’s original manuscript for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” was rejected by no fewer than 12 publishers; Columbia Records Inc. initially refused to release Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”; Jobs was booted from Apple Inc. in the mid-1980s -- we interpret them as embarrassing oversights that were subsequently corrected rather than evidence that their success may have somehow been a product of luck or happenstance.
Interesting take on the J.K. Rowling revelations, and something I'll keep in mind for hubski: the cumulative-advantage effect.
There is certainly a cumulative advantage effect but on the other hand I've read a pile of children's fantasy and Rowling is probably in my top ten. If she slaved away under a pen name long enough she would probably achieve pretty decent sales. The kind of sales that make an author's life as a lit professor more comfortable, probably never anywhere close to Harry Potter sales. There is good at your craft and then there is being lucky enough to pick up on the story or song that grabs a large number of people and convinces them to open their wallets, they aren't necessary the same thing. I think there is something about a novel or idea or talent that often makes it not appealing to publishers or producers. It's probably much easier to get a teen vampire book published than something like a book about a kid who realizes he is a greek gods son in modern day.
This article bothers me. It's not an editor's job to find and promote quality -- not remotely. As the editor quoted alludes to, it is his job to find something that will sell. So don't fault any editor who passed on the Galbraith novel -- it didn't sell (until extraordinary circumstances) and thus they made the right decision. Further, don't fault anyone who passed on Harry Potter all those years ago. Frankly, the first novel isn't terribly well-written, and while the universe it is set in has clear potential, in the mid '90s children's literature of a similar format was basically dead (we've forgotten this in the overwhelming landslide of fantasy YA books -- but we need to remember why those books are being written at all). I don't blame any of the publishers who passed on Harry Potter, and they aren't idiots -- the idiotic move would have been passing on Twilight when it came around. Also, that the basis of their experiment is music, where taste rules even more than it does in literature, in my opinion renders it irrelevant to the Rowling discussion. Incidentally, I haven't read either of Rowling's non-Harry Potter novels (although I probably will someday) but I do sometimes read Harry Potter fanfiction when I have a spare day, and that's because I don't care about Rowling being the writer -- I care about Harry Potter being the character.