Rowling wanted to start out as unknown again

[1]

British author J.K. Rowling, who was unmasked as the writer of a crime novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, earlier in July, has revealed that she chose to write under a pseudonym as she was “yearning to go back to the beginning of a writing career” in the crime genre “without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback.”
Rowling, famous for her seven-book Harry Potter series and recently published The Casual Vacancy, wrote the novel under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith and managed to keep her identity secret for almost three months.
The novel features a war veteran-turned-private investigator called Cormoran Strike. Rowling intends to continue writing crime fiction under this pseudonym. “I’ve just finished the sequel and we expect it to be published next year,” she said on the website.
The pseudonym was inspired by a childhood fantasy and admiration for American politician Robert Kennedy, Rowling revealed. “I chose Robert because it is one of my favourite men’s names, because Robert F. Kennedy is my hero,” she said in details published in the author’s website for Robert Galbraith. “Galbraith came about for a slightly odd reason. When I was a child, I really wanted to be called ‘Ella Galbraith’, and I’ve no idea why.” Rowling said she felt that she had “successfully channelled my inner bloke” after her editor David Shelley, who did not know she had written The Cuckoo’s Calling, said he “never would have thought a woman wrote that” when she revealed the truth, The success of the “first-time writer,” whose author’s biography described him as a military man, Rowling said, compared favourably with the start of her career as a writer. “Robert’s success during his first three months as a published writer (discounting sales made after I was found out) actually compares favourably with J.K. Rowling’s success over the equivalent period of her career,” Rowling wrote.
The book had sold 8,500 English language copies across all formats, hardback, eBook, library and audiobook, and received two offers from television production companies at the point Rowling was outed as the actual writer.
The Rowling connection gave a huge boost to the book’s sales, selling almost 18,000 copies in hardback after the revelation. She vehemently denied that the whole thing had been a marketing ploy.