pseudonym

Quick Link: To Pseudonym or Not to Pseudonym

by

Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I didn’t think pseudonyms were still a thing these days. There is no privacy on the web and it is pretty easy to find out information on people if you want. So unless you are doing a “Lemony Snicket” type book and a pseydonym is a marketing strategy, honesty is the best policy.  At BookBaby, Carolyn Howard-Johnson shares the pros and cons of using a pseudonym. What do you think?

~ * ~

To Pseudonym or Not to Pseudonym

by Carolyn Howard-Johnson

There can be benefits to using a pen name, but I believe there are many more downsides to using a pseudonym than upsides.

Nora Roberts, the author of more than 150 romance novels, was asked why she writes romantic suspense novels under a pseudonym. Her answer: “It’s marketing.”

She says that writing quickly makes it difficult for her publisher to publish all of her work with an appropriate amount of time between each release, so she writes works which are “edgier” than her romance novels under the pseudonym J. D. Robb. She says, “Putting it under a pseudonym helps brand it for the reader.” Children’s writers often separate their real names or their “other” writing names from their children’s work to keep work intended for children untainted.

All these reasons are absolutely valid, and there are many more. But I believe there are many more downsides to using a pseudonym than upsides, especially from marketing and organizational perspectives.

Read the full post on BookBaby

~ * ~

If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

David Farland’s Daily Kick in the Pants—Your Writing Name

by

This post, by David Farland, originally appeared on his site on 12/18/13.

I was asked recently to write an article about selecting a writing name. Many authors would never consider using a pseudonym. Their identity is intimately tied to their name, and they long to see it in print, even if it’s a name as silly as Ernest Lee Funklemeyer.

For me, a name is a brand. Choosing an author’s name is more like choosing the brand name for your new line of automobiles. Sorry, I don’t really get a thrill about seeing my name in print. Maybe I did twenty-five years ago, but it really wasn’t that important to me.

I use David Farland for my writing name, but I was raised as Dave Wolverton, and wrote my first dozen novels under that name. Why did I switch? There were a couple of reasons: When I wrote my third novel, I got a glowing review which advised people to “make sure to look on the bottom shelf at your bookstore, where Dave Wolverton’s novels are likely to be found. . .” My heart sank.

You see I had read an article a few years earlier, in which marketers for Campbell’s soup had found that 92% of all people would not bend over to pick up their favorite flavor of soup from the bottom shelf at a supermarket. People prefer to buy their goods at eye level. Which meant, of course, that no writer wants to be on the bottom shelf. By using the name Wolverton, I was losing a huge number of potential sales!

Immediately, I began investigating how hard it would be to change my writing name. I was already a bestseller in science fiction, hitting high on the science fiction bestseller lists, so I wasn’t sure that I wanted to change my name back in 1991.

When I began to write fantasy (which was my first love as a reader), I recognized that I had a second problem. Fantasy tends to sell better than science fiction, so I figured that sales would be more robust in the fantasy genre.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on David Farland’s site.