JK Rowling has published rejection letters she received writing under the name Robert Galbraith. Rowling has racked up book sales worth billions for the Harry Potter series, but set out to see if she could sell a novel without Potter’s help. She posted the rejections for “inspiration,” but as Jenny Pierson at Alternet points out, the rejections reveal a darker side of publishing:
But the larger issue here is that it’s so hard for female and diverse voices to be heard in an industry that is a publisher’s market. There are fewer publishers, and they have no motivation to shake their industry’s long history of exclusivity and favoring of white male voices for their projected award-winners or bestsellers.
