There are a lot of great female authors out there, but for some reason they are often hard to remember. One of the few how stand out immediately in my mind (among contemporary writers) is Danielle Steel, and she’s not exactly the kind of writer I feel the urge to write about on this site.

I don’t know why it is that it can be so much easier to remember great male authors when trying to think of some writer I admire. Maybe it is my own fault, or the fault of a culture that promotes male writers better. I don’t know, really.

However, one female author who is easy to remember is J.K. Rowling, who wrote the extremely successful Harry Potter books. I can’t say that I’m a Harry Potter-fanboy at all but I do feel that Rowling deserves a mention here, for several reasons.

Rowling

"J. K." Rowling

First of all, she seems like a real nerd, and we like that. Seriously, anyone who has ideas that are as geeky as the universe that Harry Potter inhabits in their heads, score big points with those of us who like nerds.

But the effect she has on other people is even more important.

Obviously, her success has encouraged a lot of young women to pursue their author dreams, and that’s a great thing. Especially if she manages to inspire and encourage the nerdy type of girls, because honestly, can there be anything hotter than a woman who writes nerdy fantasy or science fiction books? I have a hard time imagining anything sexier.

But I actually think that the most important thing about her is her name.

We all know that she writes under the pen name J. K. Rowling instead of Joanne Rowling. This is what wikipedia says about that: “Before publishing her first book, her publisher Bloomsbury feared that the target audience of young boys might be reluctant to buy books written by a female author. It requested that Rowling use two initials, rather than reveal her first name.” I think that was a very good thing.

I don’t think you would believe me if I said that I defend an outdated, sexist viewpoint like that, and it’s true that I don’t. But I still think it was good, because the whole thing told people a lot.

Once she became famous and everyone knew that she is, in fact, a woman, her sales didn’t drop one bit; they continued to climb upwards just like they had done before most people could but a face to that name. I am very much hoping that this taught the publisher that there is no need to fear female writers. They can be promoted just like the male authors without sales having to suffer.

And I am sure that there actually were a lot of fans in that young boy demographic who assumed that a man had written the books before they learned otherwise. And that hopefully taught them an important lesson too. No matter how sexist, or not, they might have been, they couldn’t deny the words that they had read. They couldn’t deny that they liked them, regardless of the sex of the author.

And that’s exactly what I hope that Rowling has helped people understand. I hope that the story of her success has helped more people understand that gender is inconsequential in matters like this.

And, of course, I hope we all remember that women writing nerdy books is hot, so that we can see more of that.

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