Harry Potter her publishers to adopt a more gender-neutral pen name in order to appeal to the male members of this age group, fearing that they would not be interested in reading a novel they knew to be written by a woman. She elected to use J. K. Rowling (Joanne Kathleen Rowling), using her grandmother's name as her second name because she has no middle name. "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" was published by Bloomsbury, the publisher of all "Harry Potter" books in the United Kingdom, on 26 June 1997. It was released in the United States on 1 September 1998
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets of revision. In early drafts of the book, the ghost Nearly Headless Nick sang a self-composed song explaining his condition and the circumstances of his unknown death. This was cut as the book's editor did not care for the poem, which has been subsequently published as an extra on J. K. Rowling's official website. The family background of Dean Thomas was removed because Rowling and her publishers considered it an "unnecessary digression", and she considered Neville Longbottom's own journey of discovery "more important to the central plot". "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" was published in the UK on