[ SECRET POST #6209 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6209 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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(Jason Derulo)



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07. [WARNING for discussion of transphobia]



































Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #887.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 (something about Crowley) - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

fantasy was NOT remotely a boys' club when jkr came on the scene?? Especially when you take youth fantasy into account.

Diane Duane and Jill Murphy come to mind most immediately, as having done VERY SPECIFICALLY books about young magic users at school, for a young audience.

Jane Yolen, Robin Hobb, Ursula K. LeGuin, Diana Wynne Jones? Anne McCaffrey, Octavia Butler??

[(Anonymous)]

Disagreed. Harry Potter was not marketed as YA, it's a kids series so YA's irrelevant. How many boys read The Worst Witch in the 90s? Anyway a few successes don't define books industry. The HP pen name detail is very well know, I don't even know what to tell you. I'm surprised that two people chose to pick on this and the proceed to list VERY adult authors.

[(Anonymous)]

It's clear that Rowling's publishers made her choose a pen name because they thought a woman author would harm sales. It's also true that there were a number of very well-recognized established women's children / young adult fantasy authors who sold a lot of books under female names.

It's possible that having a pen name allowed JKR to go absolutely bugshit nuts in popularity and far outstrip the sales of any of her competitors (of any gender). But honestly I believe that her publishers were scared of nothing and Harry Potter would have been just as a hit if published under the name Joanna Rowling.

[(Anonymous)]

We don't know that. After all HP was rejected so many times that it was almost shelved. I also have noticed that perception of female writers changed. Before, if you were to rec a female scifi writer on a scifi discussion board you had to add "but it's not romance". Idk. Harry is a boy which might be enough to attract boys or, most likelly, boys's parents.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, but also: JKR was a good writer and her work had more commercial appeal than any of the authors I mentioned. And she got a titanic marketing push.

So, it's hard to say which of those things made the difference for her popularity being so much greater than any of the other writers we're mentioning here.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh boy, you've done it now. Be prepared to be laughed at for calling JKR a good writer.

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, I am too lazy even to laugh at that. I've read tldr of the main secret give me some slack.

[(Anonymous)]

JKR's publisher told her to use her initials to hide that she was a woman, this is undisputed. The reason was probably not that fantasy was a boy's club, but that female authors tended to write books with female protagonists and be read more heavily by girls, so hiding her gender was a tactic to get more easily into the mainstream and appeal outside of a girls-only demographic. A female author writing about a boy, specifically, might have felt "off" to some people.

[(Anonymous)]

Publishers also decided that "philosopher's stone" should be changed to "sorcerer's stone" because American kids were too stupid, so I don't put much stock in specific marketing decisions, tbh