Review: Before you pick a name out of the hat . . .
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 4, 2012
Here's a helpful primer on pen names for writers.I'm surprised how many writers don't understand the legitimate use of pen names, given over a century of American schoolchildren learning the author of Tom Sawyer was really Samuel Clemens, not "Mark Twain."He covers the good reasons to do so. I think he could have better explained the need for them for writers working in different genres. Or even in different aspects of the same genre. That's why Donald Westlake had to publish his grim Parker novels as by "Richard Stark," but his own lighthearted crime caper tales under his own name.He also left off the need to keep the byline short. What's easier to remember? Daniel Nathan (who went as Frederic Dannay) and Manford Lepofsky (who went as Manfred Bennington Lee)?Or Ellery Queen?He says not to use a pen name to get out of sending a novel to a publisher with the first look option, but I believe that only applies to same-genre works. Your science fiction publisher doesn't want your latest historical romance novel.And he leaves out one good reason. Decades ago, publishers and the big bookstores began tracking book sales. When an  author's sales began dropping, they often find it impossible to sell subsequent books. Many have found it easier to change their names and start all over again. It's sad, but it's easier as an author with no sales history to sell a first novel than to sell a 3rd or 14th novel after your last one had poor sales.Be careful about what you reveal. Although it's accepted Alice Sheldon wrote science fiction under a pen name to protect her academic and/or government position, her choice of a male name seems to reflect her psychological longing to have been born a boy.