Reasons for Selecting a Pen Name

Why choose a pen name? The reasons are many for selecting a pen name:

* Security: You need to hide is at the top of the list. If you needed to disappear because of a vengeful ex-spouse, a pen name is your friend.

* Privacy: A pen name lets you write, earn money, and not be public. If you are in this category, then your public author persona cannot have any connections to your real-world existence. No pictures, no cute stories on your writing blog about your kids, nothing personal on your Amazon author page including a picture, no background, nothing. Your author persona is completely separate and distinct and there are never any intersections with your own existence.

* Inappropriate Names: Rambo McDick can write military thrillers about an elite mercenary squad called “The Penetrators.” But ole Rambo cannot sell a line of regency romances. Imagine Rambo on the cover below the damsel in an empire-waist gown! The reverse is true: “Floribunda McCrimson” can sell those regencies but it’s doubtful if “Floribunda” will sell very hack-and-slash thrillers.

* Embarrassment: You don’t want to hurt your family’s feelings or cause trouble at your day job. That erotica series you write is extremely lucrative but even so, you may not wish to discuss it at coffee hour after church. Even popular genres are no immune: Eloisa James wrote historical romances under a pen name because she was a tenured professor in English literature and wasn’t sure about her colleagues’ reaction.

* Marketing: You write in several different genres and you don’t want any confusion for your readers. This might matter, depending on what you are writing.

You might not need one if you write space opera, westerns, and romantic suspense. You can distinguish each genre through distinctive covers. Not every reader who loves your historical romances will like space opera. Keeping the same name, while having wildly different but content- appropriate covers, shows that the books are dissimilar. At the same time this allows an adventurous reader to think “I like these books by Annabelle Kingsbury so I might like her space operas too.”

But not all genres are this compatible. Say that you write florid romance and nonfiction histories that are heavily researched. These markets are different. Some nonfiction readers may not take your books seriously because of your fiction, while novel-readers may think your stories will be boring and didactic because you write how-to books.

* Your genres clash. If you write children’s picture books, sweet Amish romance, and werewolf bondage porn, it doesn’t matter how wildly different the cover art is when a reader search for you at Amazon and all your books appear. You may get overlap in readers for the children’s picture books and the sweet Amish romance. Why wouldn’t someone who likes your sweet Amish romance read your children’s picture books to their kids? They know what kind of books you write and they will be fine with both genres.

However these readers will not ignore what your werewolves get up to behind closed doors. They will be offended, especially if they purchase the porn by accident, based on your name alone. They may have things to say to you about misrepresenting what kind of person you are. They may stop buying your sweet Amish romance to protest your werewolf bondage porn. They are quite likely to tell all their friends as well about what kind of a deviant you must be, writing such dreadful books.

If what you are writing in one series may actively repel your readers in another series, then use a pen name. You may decide to be open about it in a low-key fashion, using the same author photos but otherwise ignoring the connection. Or, you may maintain strict firewalls between those personas.

So think about your writing name. Your name is as much a part of your writing business and your brand as your books are. Put some care into how you choose your name, how it sounds and how it is spelled. Manage your name so you fill up the first page of search results. The right name for your writing can improve your sales.