‘Rowling has an insatiable ego’: Trollope goes on the warpath
One is the Queen of the Aga Saga, the other is the undisputed Queen of Twitter.
now Joanna Trollope has fired what is bound to be the first salvo in a right royal war of words — blasting Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling for her ‘ insatiable’ obsession with social media.
Trollope, whose hit novels about country life include A Village Affair and The Choir, which became a BBC series starring Jane Asher and James Fox, claims Rowling’s egotism is turning her into the next Kim Kardashian and risks damaging their industry. ‘I don’t do anything on social media, deliberately. A lot of authors are quite suited to it, but I’m not.
‘Some writers like J. K. Rowling have this insatiable need and desire to be out there all the time, and that’s
entirely driven by their ego,’ Trollope tells me at the Hatchards Authors Of The Year party in Piccadilly. ‘My view is that I’m saying everything I need to say in my books.’
The twice- divorced 73-year- old, who lives in South London, has no social media presence except a Facebook page, managed by her agent. She has an estimated wealth of £ 15 million compared with Rowling’s £600 million.
‘Creating this mass following and tweeting several times a day is like wanting to be Cheryl Cole or Kim Kardashian,’ she adds.
‘It’s a ludicrous aspiration. I have no interest in people I will never meet, though I know that’s quite old-fashioned. It’s so depressing to think that aspiring authors will look at famous writers with millions of followers, and think that that is how you have to operate. It’s not, and actually, it’s the opposite.’
With more than 10.3 million followers, Rowling is one of the most influential celebrities on the microblogging platform.
Her 7,670 tweets cover everything from Brexit to Donald Trump.
‘I have a feeling that there’s going to be a lot of regret about the invasion of privacy that social media creates,’ reflects Trollope.
‘There’s a lot of talk about how privacy doesn’t exist any more, but it always will exist — if we protect it.’