Common Sense: Long Odds For Authors Newly Published

Mystery solved? Maybe not. It’s no surprise that “The Cuckoo’s Calling,” a detective story set in a London populated by supermodels and rock stars, shot to the top of best-seller lists once the identity of the author was revealed. But if the book is as good as critics are now saying it is, why didn’t it sell more copies before, especially since the rise of online publishing has supposedly made it easier than ever for first-time authors?

“It makes me sad,” Roxanne Coady, founder of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., and the online retailer JustTheRightBook.com, told me last week from Maine, where she said she was sitting near a stack of unread new books. “Because not everyone turns out to be a J. K. Rowling. It reminds me how difficult it is for even good books to succeed.”

It’s not entirely clear why Ms. Rowling decided she wanted “to fly under the radar,” as she put it on the Robert Galbraith Web site, other than to say that “being Robert Galbraith has been all about the work, which is my favorite part of being a writer.” Writing under a pseudonym obviously ruled out any tedious book signings or publicity appearances, but Ms. Rowling doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to.

And it wasn’t about money, since Ms. Rowling is donating all royalties to charity. “If sales were what mattered to me most, I would have written under my own name, and with the greatest fanfare,” she said. (A spokeswoman in London for Ms. Rowling responded to my questions by directing me to the Galbraith Web site, and said Ms. Rowling would have no further comment.)

Ms. Rowling’s last book, “The Casual Vacancy,” an adult comedy of manners published under her name and the first since the end of the Potter series, was met with high expectations and withering reviews from prominent critics. Michiko Kakutani wrote in The New York Times, “the real-life world she has limned in these pages is so willfully banal, so depressingly clichéd that ‘The Casual Vacancy’ is not only disappointing — it’s dull.” The Los Angeles Times faulted “Rowling’s inability to engage us, to invest us sufficiently in her characters.”

Still, with hardcover sales of just over 1.3 million copies, it was the No. 1 hardcover fiction title of 2012, according to Publishers Weekly’s annual ranking, outselling John Grisham, James Patterson and Danielle Steel.

Ms. Rowling may well have felt that the reaction, both critical and commercial, was distorted by her fame, and hence decided on a pseudonym for “The Cuckoo’s Calling.” It’s not clear exactly who was in on the secret: her agent, of course, and at least someone at Little, Brown & Company, her publisher, including her editor, who also edited “The Casual Vacancy.” (“The Cuckoo’s Calling” was published by Mulholland Books, a Little, Brown imprint.) “Few people within the publishing house knew the true identity of Robert at the time,” Nicole Dewey, a Little, Brown spokeswoman, told me, declining to be more specific about who knew.

But that already distorted the experiment to some extent. Given how difficult it is for first-time fiction authors, especially in a crowded genre like mystery, to find both an agent and publisher, it’s not clear “The Cuckoo’s Calling” would have made it off the slush piles. At least one other publisher, Orion Books, which like Little, Brown, is a subsidiary of the Hachette Book Group, rejected the manuscript. An editor there told The Telegraph in London that the book “didn’t stand out.”

In any event, a publishing contract is hardly a guarantee of critical or commercial success. Much depends on how a new manuscript is treated by the publisher. Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove Atlantic, is widely viewed as a master at introducing new literary talent to the marketplace. He published “Cold Mountain” by then first-time novelist Charles Frazier, which went on to win the National Book Award and sell over 11 million copies.

“There’s no question, if a publisher decides to get behind a book, to invest its publishing capital, to use its traction with the chains, with Amazon, fight for the promotion money to get the book into the front of stores, you can do a lot to bring attention to a worthy first novel,” he said.

Mr. Entrekin cited “Matterhorn,” by first-time novelist Karl Marlantes, which he published in 2010. The author “worked on the book for over 20 years and couldn’t find a publisher,” Mr. Entrekin said. Then, as the book was about to be published in a tiny first edition, Mr. Entrekin got a copy from a buyer at Barnes & Noble, loved it, and bought out the first printing.

He re-edited it, cut 300 pages, got advance quotes from prominent authors, introduced the author to booksellers and hosted a media lunch in Manhattan. Amazon.com gave the book a glowing review, chose it as a best book of the month, and got an exclusive review from Mark Bowden, author of “Black Hawk Down.” “ ‘Matterhorn’ is a great novel,” his review began. It sold over 400,000 copies.

Early Short Story by Stieg Larsson to Be Published

A short story by the 17-year-old Stieg Larsson will be published in English for the first time next year, possibly enticing fans of the best-selling Millennium trilogy that was released after Mr. Larsson’s death in 2004.

Stieg Larsson, the Swedish writer who died in 2004, is shown in a 1998 photograph. An early short story of his is set to be published.

The unpublished story is part of a new anthology of crime fiction, “A Darker Shade of Sweden,” scheduled for release in February. Mysterious Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, announced on Tuesday that it had acquired the collection.

“Sweden’s most distinguished and best-loved crime writers have contributed stories to an anthology that promises to sate the desire to read about the dark side of Sweden,” the publisher said in a statement.

The anthology collects stories from 20 Swedish writers, including Henning Mankell, Asa Larsson, Maj Sjowall, Per Wahloo and Sara Stridsberg. Eva Gabrielsson, Mr. Larson’s companion, has also written a story that will be published in the collection.

John-Henri Holmberg, a writer and close friend of Mr. Larsson, edited the anthology.

Mr. Larsson’s series, which began with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and chronicles the adventures of the computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, is one of the most successful ever published.

Hip Resurfacing Draws Warning After Study Published in Lancet

A major study released on Monday urged women to avoid an alternative hip replacement procedure known as “resurfacing” and also recommended against its use in smaller men.

The study reflected the experiences of some 32,000 patients followed by the National Joint Registry of England and Wales. The report was sponsored by the British registry and published in a medical journal, The Lancet.

The researchers, headed by Dr. Ashley W. Blom of the University of Bristol, concluded that resurfacing had an “unacceptably high” early failure rate in women when compared with traditional hip replacement. The early failure rate was also higher in smaller men.

Traditional hip implants are supposed to last 10 years or more before requiring replacement. But the only class of patients in which the durability of a resurfacing was on a par with a traditional plastic-and-metal implant was middle-aged men of larger stature, the study found.

The new report is in keeping with earlier findings about resurfacing, a procedure that preserves more of a patient’s thigh bone than a conventional hip replacement.

Some device makers and surgeons heavily promoted the technique as a breakthrough that would allow younger patients to remain more active. But the procedure’s popularity has fallen in recent years as concerns about it have grown.

Resurfacing devices belong to a class of products know as metal-on-metal implants in which both the cup and ball of an implant are made of metal. Over the last two years, the use of all-metal implants has largely ceased because of evidence that they generate metallic debris as they wear, damaging tissue and muscle.

In a commentary accompanying the new report, an expert in this country, Dr. Art Sedrakyan, noted that the apparent failure of resurfacing devices raised questions about how such products were reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration.

“If hip resurfacing devices are found to be unsafe, then the implications are grave,” wrote Dr. Sedrakyan, a researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.

While traditional all-metal implants were marketed in this country with little testing, the F.D.A. required producers to run clinical trials of resurfacing implants before they were sold here. As a result, patients who got traditional metal hips that failed can sue their manufacturers, while those patients who got a resurfacing that failed are barred from doing so.

Companies that market resurfacing devices such as Smith & Nephew, which sells a product known as the Birmingham implant, have repeatedly argued that the devices are not prone to the same problems as traditional all-metal implants. And some patients who got a resurfacing have also said that it has allowed them to participate in more physically demanding activities, like skiing.

In a statement, Smith & Nephew said that the new report underscored the company’s longstanding position that “patient selection” is important to the success of the Birmingham device.

“In the right patients, it has a record of superior clinical performance,” the company said.

Dr. Blom, the British researcher, reported that data showed the Birmingham device was used in about 50 percent of all resurfacing procedures captured by the registry.