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.