One of the first decisions writers have to make, once they’ve actually sold a manuscript, is what name to write under. There are a lot of possible considerations here, so let’s start with your actual name. My current full name is Patricia Collins Wrede; I could have chosen to put the whole thing on my book covers (as my friend Lois McMaster Bujold did), or I could have gone with Pat Wrede, P.C. Wrede, P. Collins Wrede, Patricia Wrede, or even, heaven help me, “Patsy” or “Trish” Wrede. And that’s before we get to considering using my maiden name as my writing last name (which would have happened quite naturally if I’d started selling just a few years earlier than I actually did).
The name you put on the cover is one you will likely be stuck with for the rest of your writing life. It will be your public face: you will have to answer to “Jane Doe” if you ever go to a convention, you will have to sign autographs as “Jane Doe,” your fans will refer to you as “Jane,” and so on. Consider carefully before you put something on the cover that isn’t what people normally call you. It’s much harder than you think to get used to being called by a different name, especially if it’s only for a few weeks out of a year.
These days, it is also worth considering the ease with which someone who wants to buy your book will be able to find you on Google (rather than getting two pages on the famous-in-his-field electrical engineer of the same name).
Length is another consideration, for two reasons: first, the longer the author’s name is, the smaller the typeface it has to be in in order to fit it on the cover and the spine of the book, and the harder it will be for a prospective reader to spot from a distance. Second, if you stick with a writing career and amass a large number of titles and a reasonably large audience, signing “Nathanial Gregorovich Zoroaster Radegundegast-Abernathy III” over and over is going to make your hand very tired and make the line move very slowly. On the other hand, it might be more recognizable than “J. Smith.”
Those who have changed their name upon getting married have to balance questions like the length of the last name (if hyphenated) and the possibility of getting stuck writing under an ex-spouse’s surname ten years down the road (as has happened to more than one woman I know, including, obviously, me) against the problems that can come with writing under a name that isn’t quite the same as what’s on your legal I.D. Convincing people that you really are the Jane Smith who wrote the book they’re buying, when all your I.D. says “Jane S. Brown” can be difficult.
Which brings me to the question of pseudonyms.
There aren’t actually all that many good reasons to use a pen name … and if you don’t have a good reason, you will probably regret the decision in the long run.
Good reasons include: Your publisher has asked you to (because your real name is too close to some other established author’s name – Robert J. Heinlein, for instance – or because you are switching genres and your editor thinks a pen name will keep readers from getting confused, or because you are writing the next Nancy Drew book and it’s a work-for-hire contract that requires you to use a house name, or because your editor thinks your new work is a major departure and will sell better as a “first novel” for some reason); you are incredibly prolific and you can’t sell six books a year under your real name; you will get fired from your day job if your boss finds out you write; you are writing for a genre that requires you to be the other gender (Westerns, thrillers, and Romances are about the only ones where this is still partly true, though it used to be quite common); you have written an exposé of a dangerous group who are likely to send people after you to kill you if they find out who you are (drug dealers, gangs, the Mafia, etc.); you are collaborating with somebody and you want a single pen name for your “team” efforts; you have deep-seated personal reasons for not wanting your real name on your books (one author I heard about was abused by his parents and didn’t want their last name honored by showing up on his books, for instance).
Reasons that are not so good include: You think it would be cool. Your best friend thinks it would be cool. You want to find out what other people “really” think about your book. You don’t want people to recognize you at the grocery store checkout. You want to hide your early “bad” work and only put your real name on stuff after you get “good.” You think everybody does it. You like the idea of having a Big Secret.
The hassle of using a pen name for the next 25 or 30 or 50 years is just not worth the miniscule amount of “cool” or the brief fun of having a Big Secret. And if you really plan on keeping it a Big Secret, you will not be able to talk to anyone other than your agent and editor about your writing, which really takes a lot stronger motivation than “secrets are fun.”
Unless they know you are the one who wrote it, most of your friends won’t have read your book and won’t be able to tell you what they “really” think anyway.
If you publish a bunch of “bad” stuff under one name, and then try to switch to your “real” name, you will probably find that you lose a lot of your audience – as far as the market is concerned, your “real” name is an unknown first novelist, and you will have just thrown away several years of building a following (and, potentially, several thousand dollars in sales). [Note: I’m not talking about the kind of situation where the publisher wants the change, as mentioned under “good reasons” above. That usually does have something to do with the market.]
In fact, I once met an author who, for several of the bad reasons listed above, began publishing under a pseudonym. After a couple of years, he decided it was too much hassle and he wanted to switch to his real name. So he started publishing “collaborations” between his pseudonym and himself. And he started getting fan letters that said “It’s really nice of you, Mr. Pseudonym, to try to help out beginners, but that new guy is ruining your work and you should go back to writing solo.” Really.
The odds of having a stranger in a checkout line recognize your name are … small. Very small. I’ve had it happen exactly twice in the past 20 years, and one of them was someone who’d seen me on a panel at a convention two days earlier, so I’m not even actually sure that it was the name she recognized. Even with bookstores, the only ones I shop at where people recognize my name are the two local SF stores, whose proprietors have been acquaintances since long before I started writing – and I shop at a lot of bookstores. Lois McMaster Bujold, who has a string of Hugo rockets lined up on her mantelpiece and a rabid fan following, also does not get name recognition at most non-SF-specialty bookstores, much less at the grocery store or the department store. She has to tell them who she is before she offers to autograph their stock. And she, too, has been writing for nearly twenty years.
Think very carefully before you commit to a pen name without having a really good reason.
If you are still determined to use a pen name, refer to the considerations farther up, like length and whether you will be OK answering to that name at public appearances. And since you are making it up, consider a bit where you’d like to be on the bookstore shelves. It is unlikely that you can arrange things so your books will be at eye level – there are too many other titles coming and going that can move yours up or down a couple of shelves – but you can pick a name that will be shelved close to somebody else whose books are similar to yours, and you can shoot for the front, middle, or back of the alphabet.
Thank you for this!
I’d actually been regretting that I’d published under my real name and wishing I’d chosen a pen name.
I’ve heard of authors getting hate mail. And I’d worried that someone crazy might read one of my books, decide he hated it and me, and hunt me down. Yes, that does sound a little paranoid, doesn’t it? 😉 Your words on anonymity (no one recognizing you in the grocery store) are reassuring.
Thing is, my name is relatively unusual. I was Ney before I married. My husband was Grimm. And we both hyphenated! There’s a chance we’re the only Ney-Grimm’s in the world.
I spent a lot of time on this debate, for myself. I finally went with a pen name because my real name is very unusual. *waves at J.M. above* The company I work for is (with good reason) very concerned with its standing in the community, and I didn’t ever want to find myself in the position of being told they didn’t approve of what I was writing. The stories I write aren’t generally what they want on the cover of the annual report, not when we’re in a rather conservative area.
I considered going with a pen name when I was first establishing my online presence. I felt like “Smith” was too boring and common. It was strange whenever I’d go to a writing conference or event and people would see me and call me Tiana Lei (or if my husband would be with me, they’d call him Mr. Lei, which was hilarious to hear him called by my middle name). It got to be too much work to keep up multiple identities, and I stopped before I even got published (which I’m still not). Now, the only reason I’d consider a pen name is if my publishers recommended it.
I’m not published, nor likely to be seeing as I still haven’t gotten even one complete manuscript finished, but not sure on what I would sign as. Choosing a name and sticking to it wouldn’t be hard though. Online I have a different name for each site I go on, I did role-play extensively, and as an only child I spent a lot of time talking to myself. If I were to get published I might do something quirky and write my name backwards, but otherwise it would probably just be my first initial and my maiden name for simplicity.
This is an interesting point, particularly as I grew up reading your books and often had to crawl on my belly to find them at the ‘W’ end of the very last bookshelf in the shop or library.
Having a ‘W’ surname myself, it has always struck me as a less than ideal place to be found.
I thought thast some people wrote under different names because one publisher had the right to all the novels of J. Smith, so the next publisher was offered the works of S. Jones.
Agatha Christie is probably the most famous author that had to write under the name of the man she divorced.
PAtricia Wrede: “Second, if you stick with a writing career and amass a large number of titles and a reasonably large audience, signing “Nathanial Gregorovich Zoroaster Radegundegast-Abernathy III” over and over is going to make your hand very tired and make the line move very slowly. On the other hand, it might be more recognizable than “J. Smith.””
It would be a great name for Radagast the Brown if he were writing litter-char.
“Which brings me to the question of pseudonyms.”
My favourite pseudonym is “Lawrence Watt-Evans” which is used by Lawrence Watt Evans.
“So he started publishing “collaborations” between his pseudonym and himself. And he started getting fan letters that said “It’s really nice of you, Mr. Pseudonym, to try to help out beginners, but that new guy is ruining your work and you should go back to writing solo.” Really.”
Priceless!
“and you can shoot for the front, middle, or back of the alphabet.”
In one uni course, I was in charge of getting assmbling a list of teams and their members. Out of perversity, I listed eveything in reverse alphabetical order. It looked surprisingly odd.
J.M. Ney-Grimm: “Thing is, my name is relatively unusual. I was Ney before I married. My husband was Grimm. And we both hyphenated! There’s a chance we’re the only Ney-Grimm’s in the world.”
I have said for years that I might well be the only Gene Wirchenko in the world. For my full name, it is almost certainly true. Do we have any other Tiggers* here?
* “But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is I’m the only one.”
Grrr! Broket-munching forum software is a bother. Here is the Tigger lyrics URL:
http://www.pooh-corner.org/tigger_lyrics.shtml
So I’m wondering your opinion on my situation: my name is unbelievably common. I once went to a doctor’s office which had 67 of us in the computer – and I don’t live in a large metropolis. I’ve wondered if (should I ever finish any of my many WIPs) it would be wise to choose a pseudonym, just so people know me from… any other author with my name. Thoughts?
I have a blog about editing, which I write under my pseudonym. But when (if) (when) my book gets published, it will be under my real name.
But I really just wanted to say that I’m a Carl, and recognized your name at the career center once, some years ago, on a mentor list.
There is also the question of bank details. Besides your publisher and editor, you will have to set it up with your bank if your checks are going to come made out to your pseudonym.
I have kind of a Thing about writing under my own name; I figure if I don’t have enough faith in a story to put my real name on it, I’ve no business inflicting it on other people. (Not declaring that as a manifesto for anybody else; it’s just the way my brain rolls on the subject.) If a publisher ever wants a different name from me for genre-branding, I hope they’re okay with just dropping the middle initial.
I’ve known (unpublished and un-finished) writers who were keen on pseudonyms because of worries about the crazed-stalker-fan. Aside from the implied hubris, I have to wonder if it would even work. Given the internet and the effort a crazed-stalker-type can put into their target, it seems like having to break a pseud would barely slow them down.
Oh, and one who wanted a pseudonym because she just didn’t like her real name. *shrug*
I haven’t written anything publishable yet, but I lean toward using my maiden name as a pen name, mainly because it’s easily pronounceable, while my married surname is mispronounced probably 90% of the time.