Why do writers use pseudonyms?

Two reasons I know of:

1. Personal - some people are exceptionally private, especially in this day and age, and would like to remain so in their personal lives.
2. Professional - much like other artists, authors can be tied to a specific style of writing or genre. Existing fans can be upset if an author experiments in another genre, and new fans can't be picked up if they automatically assume everything the author writes is not something they'd like to read.

There may be legal reasons, too - but IANAL.

posted over 13 years ago

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Zayne S Halsall‭

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Reasons that I've heard of: (I'm overlapping other posters here somewhat but I'm trying to be complete.)

1. The author doesn't want family, friends, or business associates to know that he is writing this sort of book. The most obvious example would be if he is writing pornography. This includes other controversial subjects, like the author has a job where most of his co-workers are conservative and he wants to write liberal political books, or vice versa. Or the author wants to write about controversial religious beliefs, etc. Or it could simply be that someone trying to establish a reputation in a "serious" profession fears that it would look bad to write "frivolous" books, like a college professor might not want colleagues to know he writes escapist adventure stories.

2. Protect privacy. Some authors love becoming celebrities and getting attention from fans and the media. But others hate the idea, they want to shield their privacy. So they write under a pseudonym so people have a hard time tracking them down.

3. The author believes that a pseudonym "sounds better" or sounds more appropriate to the genre. Like someone writing about French cooking whose real name is Lin Chang may decide that that name will not bring French cooking to mind, and so write under the name, say, Francois Durand. Or someone with a foreign name that is hard to pronounce may use a pseudonym that is simple and easy, like Fred Smith. Or conversely someone with a very common-sounding name, like Fred Smith, might use a pseudonym that sounds more distinctive.

4. Authors who write in multiple genres sometimes use different names for different genres to avoid confusing or offending fans.

5. Writers for small magazines or newspapers sometimes use pseudonyms to make it look like the publication is bigger and more diverse than it really is. If someone is trying to start a new magazine and the first few issues consist solely of articles by himself, he might use pseudonyms to make it look like there are a dozen different writers.

posted over 6 years ago

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Jay‭

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To answer your specific question about Seanan/Mira, see http://seananmcguire.com/writefaq.php#mira. In her case, she's using different names for urban fantasy vs science fiction.

There's also the classic midlist death spiral--author doesn't sell enough, publisher drops them, author changes name so they can sell new books.

posted about 13 years ago

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Elizabeth‭

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Zane hit the main ones: desire for personal privacy the other primary reason I know is marketing - same as actors, some authors will adopt snazzier-sounding names to sound good on the bookshelf.

Beyond that, you've got a lot of exceptional cases - Joe Hill is a pen name to avoid the otherwise-painfully-blatant connection to his father; Alice Bradley Sheldon probably falls under "privacy" but in a very extreme manner, etc. etc.

posted over 13 years ago

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Standback‭

680 reputation 38 269 122 1

For example, to distantiate themselves from what they are paid for to write for good money from what they want to be proud of.

posted about 13 years ago

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Gennady Vanin Геннадий Ванин‭

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Besides "personal privacy" there is "professional privacy", an author that holds a sensitive full time job, in public, may not want to publish under their real name because the content of their fiction may have some impact on their professional life.

Their fiction may, for example, contain explicit blow-by-blow sex scenes, or portray homosexuality or drug use in a positive sense, or implicitly endorse crime (like Mr. Robot does hacking) or murder as solutions to problems.

Especially in the current social climate, we cannot trust people to distinguish fiction from the author's real views, or indeed the fiction may contain the author's real views, which they do not espouse in public because they would embarrass their institution, company, or office, and in many high level positions that can be a termination offense. For an elected official, it can be fodder for their lying opposition.

Examples are professors, anybody elected to any public office (even City Council, Sheriff or City Manager), medical doctors, lawyers, mental health professionals, CEOs of various companies, even people elected to private office; like The Quilting Club presidency or a local Credit Union Board of Directors.

This may not be a strategy to take to the national level, but some of us are self-aware enough to know we aren't going to be running for Congress or President or even Mayor, so nobody is going to hire private investigators to do a deep dig on our finances.

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

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