What’s in a Name: publishing under a pseudonym
It’s an exciting business, publishing your first book. There’s a lot to think about – covers, edits, will anyone buy it – and of course, what name you should publish under.
For some people that’s a no-brainer. I wrote a book! I’m proud! This is my name, look at me!
Elsewhere, it can be more complicated. There are plenty of good reasons for authors to use a pseudonym. Lots of people would rather not admit to reading romance, let alone m/m romance, because of the potential for ridicule, book snobbery and prurient ‘why do you like…?’ questions that never seem to be asked of people who read books about, say, serial killers who rape and dismember women. So admitting to writing the stuff is even more scary. Much more seriously and sadly, in some parts of the world m/m authors would face harassment in their real lives simply for writing about gay/bi/trans men.
I’m lucky enough not to live somewhere like that, but I still use a pseudonym, mainly because I’m a commissioning editor for a largish publishing company. This gives several reasons to keep my name out of it:
1) My workplace is full of the kind of people who might not only read my book, but give me editorial assessments of it. Hell to the no.
2) My line of work is not sex-on-page-positive. It really, really isn’t. So very not. The idea of merging my editorial and writing existences is right up there in Top Ten Inappropriate Things with asking my grandmother to proofread the sex scenes.
3) I didn’t much want to get fifty 1* Amazon revenge reviews from people whose MSS I’ve rejected. I’m not kidding about this. In my career as a commissioning editor I’ve had a fair few abusive responses to rejections, often full of vague threats of what will happen when the author is rich and famous. I’ve been called a capitalist lackey, assured I’ll be first against the wall when the revolution comes. There was a lovely handwritten letter a while ago which read in full, and without asterisks, “F*** YOU YOU F***ING C**T.” (This was particularly noteworthy because it was written on the back of the writer’s letterhead. There’s a pet-grooming salon I won’t be visiting.) My company stopped sending signed rejection letters when the Submissions Editor who handled slush was followed home by a rejected author who then emailed her photos of her house, as a delicate hint. Etc. Obviously, most aspiring authors aren’t total fruitloops, but there are enough to spoil your day, and since my real surname is distinctive, it’s not a risk I’d like to take.
It was definitely important to me that I separated my work and writing lives. So it was great that, having made this decision, I got confused switching between Twitter accounts on my phone and became KJ Charles during a conversation with my boss, who instantly Googled the hell out of me and tweeted, ‘Cover BLOWN.’ Sigh.
(Actually my boss is a total star, who has been very supportive and discreet, except for sending some of my more unflattering blogs about publishing round the office with comments like, ‘Honestly, you’d think the person who wrote this works here’ or ‘It’s like KJ Charles comes to our meetings.’)
I’ll admit also, I was nervous. First book, not sure if anyone would like it, not sure if I wanted my friends and family to know I was writing sexy romance. It’s a pretty nervewracking thing to publish anything at all, let alone something deeply emotional, from which people may choose to extrapolate ideas about you as a person. I wanted to insulate myself from that, to keep it my secret. To not face up to potential disapproval (and there was definitely that in some quarters). To allow myself to fail in safety if I was going to fail.
Now, obviously, having just had my sixth book accepted for publication, I’m showing everyone my whizzy author business cards and chatting widely about this amazingly cool and fun thing I do, and anyone who doesn’t like it can get knotted. I’d be perfectly happy to use my real name except for the aforementioned job stuff.
But I’m still sticking to my pseudonym for one last reason which is, it’s a much cooler-sounding name than my own. And if I’m making stuff up for a living anyway, I don’t see why I shouldn’t invent myself too.
Do you use a pseudonym, and keep your reading/writing life separate from your reality? Or do you put your cards on the table?
KJ Charles blogs about writing and publishing, sometimes indiscreetly. She is the author of The Magpie Lord and A Case of Possession. Think of England will publish 1 July. With huge thanks to Karen Wellsbury for suggesting the blog topic!
Great post!
I was getting ready to publish my first book, a friend of mine asked me what name I would be writing under. Well, my own, of course. I’d been HB Pattskyn online for 5 years or so and had a fanfiction following. I wanted those readers to be able to find my published works (if they were so inclined). My friend blanched, looking mortified. Didn’t I know I was committing career suicide? Erm. Google me. I’ve already posted so many things in so many places that an overly conservative boss isn’t going to hire me no matter what I write. I am out of very single closet imaginable! So she suggested that if I was that committed to writing under the name HB Pattskyn, perhaps I should change my*legal* name to something else, so I could “safely” write as HB Pattskyn, but put something else on my resume. (Just for the record, Helen Barbara Pattskyn, while my legal name, isn’t the one I was born with; I’d already changed my name legally, as a divorce-present to myself. So, seriously, 5 years after going through that I should do it again? No, but thanks for the well-meant advice. My friend is an absolute love, and meant well, but at the time, I was waiting tables, going to school for a job in library work–I seriously doubt that my inability to land a job had anything to do with what I write. If it did, I’m completely certain I would have been miserable in a workplace that conservative anyway. Instead, I’m very happily volunteering for AIDS Partnership Michigan, a place where I’m completely appreciated!)
I’m also very, very lucky to have an awesomely open-minded husband who comes from a largely open-minded family. My mother in law reads everything I write.
All of that said, I know not everybody is so lucky. I totally get why an editor would need to keep a professional wall between their day job and their writing (and suddenly I have more sympathy than ever for editors! Yikes. No one should have to deal with that level of crazy.) Maybe if my husband was in a more conservative field or my in-laws weren’t so awesome, I’d use a pen name to keep the peace, but not having to is a freedom I love being able to enjoy.
My mother and mother-in-law both read me, though I have it on good authority that my mum skims the sex scenes with her eyes shut, for which thank God.
The fruitloops are exactly why I review under an alias, much to the ire of confirmed authors like Anne Rice, who is petitioning Amazon that all reviewers should only review with their real names. My answer to that is and will always be: sure, if all the authors start publishing under their real names too.
There are simply too many crazies out there. Some authors have a very scary world view, and it’s best to stay under their radar.
Thanks for a really good blog post. Good points all of them. I especially liked your boss. 🙂
When (or if) my book is ready, it will be published under a pseudonym. Another one, to keep full separation.
I like my boss. 🙂 Yeah, I have zero time for Anne Rice’s demands. Ludicrous. We all have different needs for privacy. I don’t like the goldfish-bowl world.
1st July can NOT come quick enough. So looking forward to book 3. And whilst I didn’t have a job in a publishing house, I was a self employed web designer who had contracts with people like the Oxford Diocese (don’t ask). That is all done and dusted now, but by then I was RJ Scott. Anyone with an ounce of google FU could probably find my real name, it’s not really a secret, but I kind of like my dual personality!
RJ X
I love your story about your boss, KJ. I was outed grandly at my library day job when one of my books appeared in Library Journal. My boss photocopied it, wrote my real name on it in thick black marker, and stapled it proudly into the communications log. In her eyes I’d just been officially sanctioned. It didn’t occur to her that it would be awkward for me and the less open minded co-workers who weren’t 100% clear on what I wrote.
There are icky people in my real life that I wouldn’t want lurking around my social media. That’s a big reason that I’m glad I took a pen name. When I started writing full time, I visited my family and had a talk with them about what I write and how I planned to support myself. They were bewildered and embarrassed, and they would prefer I wrote mainstream, but in all it wasn’t too bad.
There was an interesting tipping point for me when I realized more people knew me as Jordan than my given name. Or when those two worlds collide and people don’t know what to call you.
I was vacationing with some reader and author friends and I reserved a cabin. I told them all they’d need to check in under my real name when they got there. We all had a laugh because my given name sounds like a totally made up romance novel name 😀
Ah, the loving outing. I carefully didn’t say anything to anyone on my RL FB because of all my conservative Catholic family members, and then my mum emailed them all the Amazon buy link…
I use a pen name because my last name is unusual enough (and not really a secret) that only people who are related to me have it. I figure my kid deserves at least a few years of not have his mom’s smexy books show up at the top of the Google results if, no, when he and his friends search on their own names.
Also, publishing houses should have to provide editors with personal bodyguards. Clearly. O_O
i use a pen name because I figure if someone does a google search for the name that’s on my credit cards + neonatology (the day job), I don’t want them getting hits about vampires.
And day-um, your stories are appalling. Stay safe!
I use a pen name for my ‘adult’ writing and not for my YA. This has nothing to do with being reluctant for people to know what I write.
I wrote on Gay Authors, a free story site, for a number of years and people know me there as Nephylim. When I published my first book I decided I wanted to use Nephylim because that was the side of my personality that wrote, and also because I hoped it would help sales that I already had a large reader base at GA, It didn’t, but hey.
When I published my first YA book the publisher felt it would be easier for young people to identify with Cheryl than Nephylim, and of course there was a huge kick to seeing my real name on books.
Real name for me – though I did worry about MIL knowing what I write. My mother is no doubt rotating in her grave. She wrote to the BBC if there was a naked male chest on the TV! I wasn’t writing MM at first but I still think I’d have used my real name from the outset. BUT your reasons for not doing so are very sound. You really don’t need that sort of hassle from rejected writers, Susie Sweetbread. Oh god no, I’ve used your real name. All hell will break loose. Can I press delete or post… let’s see…..
Damn you! /tries to delete Susie Sweetbread FB page/
You’ve spelled out almost precisely why I write under a pen name. When my first book was contracted, I was doing editorial work primarily on children’s books, and I thought, “That could get awkward if a future employer Googles me.” I also have a very common name; if you Google my legal name, thousands of results come up (mostly college lacrosse players, weirdly) and I thought that could be a problem when trying to build a platform. So I picked a not-super-different-from-my-real-name pseudonym and went about keeping my writing and editorial work in separate spheres. I don’t think anyone at my day job knows my secret identity (but I think they would be mostly cool with it if someone found out—very liberal office, luckily) but my authorial and editorial lives have started overlapping as I get commissioned for more freelance work. (I meet a lot of authors at conferences.) Of course, it’s all so thinly veiled; there are photos of me all over the Internet, so I don’t feel like it would be hard for someone to connect the dots if they knew me in real life. (It doesn’t bother me if people find out, but I think I’d still write under a pseudonym if I had it to do over because it has given me a little discretion over who finds out.)
It’s probably obvious mine is a pen name. I use it mainly for the privacy of my husband and children. Also to keep my online activity with the PTA (!!), my friends and my family separate from the writing. I’m open about what I’m writing and my pen name if people ask, and that photo is the real me,(we’ll see how that goes once my first book is published!). I like to think of my pen name as my ‘business name’, less than as a ‘disguise’, which suits my situation.
I fully sympathise with your reasons for keeping your writer identity and your work identity separate. I think a lot of writers are in that position. I certainly don’t think anyone should have to justify their choice or feel guilty for it.
On the whole, I think people are surprised I write romance because they don’t see it fitting with my personality rather than them having a low opinion of the genre generally. In fact, so far, they seem more surprised I’m writing romance than the fact the protagonists are gay! For that, I count myself lucky. I’d hate to move in circles where people were looking down their noses at what I write. Or worse still, regarding it with revulsion.
Yes, i use a penname for professional and family reasons. Like many things in my life, though, it comes from a place of vague intentions that isn’t really fully thought through. I’ve never really worked out what to tell my kids about my writing so they know patchy stuff. Occasionally I have blood-running-cold moments, eg imagining one of my children blurting out my penname, then someone looks up the books and they get bullied at school about it, or a straitlaced parent finds out and doesn’t want them at their house …. Or or or… A hundred possibilities. Most of the time I’m a bit more rational about it though.
Real name for me for a wide variety of reasons. I’m pretty sure I behave much better as myself than I would if I used an alternate persona.
I’m using a pseudonym as well–for the same reasons that everyone listed, professional, personal, and also, well, my real name sounds so fairy princess that it looks more like a pseudonym than my pseudonym does.
When submitting to editors in the past under my real name, I actually had one write me back a wonderfully gentle letter stating that it was polite to give one’s name, so it would be easier to write out checks.
Yay, a kindred spirit with a fake-sounding real name. 😉
I’m jealous. My own name combines the uninteresting with the hard-to-spell.
What a great idea for a post,
.
I use a combo, my own name for reviews and blogging, but a pseudonym for some of what I write (as its very specialised and unrelated). While there is nothing new in writers using pseudonymous, the trend for reviewers and bloggers to do use has me a little conflicted. I went to a lecture recently regarding how the famous can be attacked because they no loner appear to be real people, and I sometimes think that this happens when critics feel that they are anonymous.
I got a comment a few weeks ago, via my pseudlicious blog that was incredibly hurtful and personal in a way that I never get when writing under my real name.
I really wanted to respond to the comments, starting by saying- have the courage to attack me by a least letting me know who you are, but as this seemed rather hypocritical so I sucked it up.
A small plea for kindness…
The name under which I originally published on my first go around many years ago is now used by no fewer than seven–count ’em, seven–other authors, including two in my preferred genre. It’s my real name, too. So when it came time to try publishing my work again, I opted for a name no one else had. I like having a name all to myself and it makes my work lots easier to find. If anyone’s looking. A Google search of my old/still mine name turns up everyone but me.
My kids and birth family think it’s hilarious I have this other name, and my new husband is kind of glad because of the sexy m/m I write. It’s not like I hide, though. As pen names go, mine doesn’t hide much.
Great post topic!
I’ve only just seen this and yes, your boss was a fabulous woman. Fabulous.