Sorry, I kept forgetting to check my copies of the older In Death books, bought more or less when each book was originally released, starting back in 1995. Here's my report:
Beginning with Naked, JD Robb is the only name on the cover or spine, but there is a blurb on the back that says JD Robb is the pseudonym of NY Times best selling author Nora Roberts (regular font, not large or small print); a NR single title book list is always included in the front of the book. Ads appear in the back of the books intermittently for the other JD Robb books with "Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb" appearing at the top of those ads. Ads for Nora Roberts books appear intermittently as well, after Naked. The back blurb about JDR=NR moved off of the back, inside the back of the book with Conspiracy (book #7 or 8?). There is no photo or author blurb on the books until you hit Betrayal, book #12. At that point, her photo appears on the back of the books and her name is listed on the cover as "Nora Roberts (small caps) writing as JD Robb (large caps)."
It looks like her publisher wasn't hiding who was writing the books, but wasn't really pushing or promoting them either at first, probably waiting to see how they were received before that happened. My take is that they'd be worried about alienating an established readership by introducing a fairly abrasive character in a new subgenre, and also worried about harming the reputation of a romance cash cow (I say that with the utmost respect for Roberts, since I do read her single titles and think that what she does, she does amazingly well) if the new series crashed and burned. The interesting thing for me is that I know a couple of guys who read and liked the In Death books as police procedurals, more or less, but stopped reading them when they learned who Nora Roberts/JD Robb was, because they didn't want to read romance.
Re: Follow up re: JD Robb
Beginning with Naked, JD Robb is the only name on the cover or spine, but there is a blurb on the back that says JD Robb is the pseudonym of NY Times best selling author Nora Roberts (regular font, not large or small print); a NR single title book list is always included in the front of the book. Ads appear in the back of the books intermittently for the other JD Robb books with "Nora Roberts writing as JD Robb" appearing at the top of those ads. Ads for Nora Roberts books appear intermittently as well, after Naked. The back blurb about JDR=NR moved off of the back, inside the back of the book with Conspiracy (book #7 or 8?). There is no photo or author blurb on the books until you hit Betrayal, book #12. At that point, her photo appears on the back of the books and her name is listed on the cover as "Nora Roberts (small caps) writing as JD Robb (large caps)."
It looks like her publisher wasn't hiding who was writing the books, but wasn't really pushing or promoting them either at first, probably waiting to see how they were received before that happened. My take is that they'd be worried about alienating an established readership by introducing a fairly abrasive character in a new subgenre, and also worried about harming the reputation of a romance cash cow (I say that with the utmost respect for Roberts, since I do read her single titles and think that what she does, she does amazingly well) if the new series crashed and burned. The interesting thing for me is that I know a couple of guys who read and liked the In Death books as police procedurals, more or less, but stopped reading them when they learned who Nora Roberts/JD Robb was, because they didn't want to read romance.