'I turned down 'Robert Galbraith'': Editor admits rejecting JK Rowling's secret novel

In the mid-1990s, a string of publishers turned down a manuscript written by an author called Joanne Rowling about a boy wizard. It was a decision that would cost them millions in lost revenues.

Now it has emerged that other publishers missed out on a more recent payday after rejecting a detective novel that the bestselling Harry Potter author submitted under a pseudonym.

They learned of their error on Sunday when JK Rowling was unmasked as Robert Galbraith, supposedly a military man and first-time crime writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling.

Kate Mills, fiction editor at Orion Publishing, came forward to admit that she had unwittingly turned down the new Rowling work, and suggested that colleagues at other publishers had done the same.

She told The Independent: “I thought it was well-written but quiet. It didn’t stand out for me and new crime novels are hard to launch right now.” Asked if she regretted revealing she had passed on the book, Ms Mills said: “No, it’s out there. You’ve got to love a book to take it on. It wasn’t for me.”

Celebrated crime writer Val McDermid, who wrote a positive “blurb” for the cover of The Cuckoo’s Calling unaware it was a Rowling work, said: “I have some sympathy with publishers who turned the book down. There are all sorts of reasons why people turn you down and it isn’t always to do with the quality of the book. Sadly in extraordinary circumstances like this you can look a bit of a numpty.”