Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38325
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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. 

Original score: 2