Pen Names

It’s quite common for authors to decide to use a pen name to publish their work under as opposed to their real name and there can be a lot of different reasons for this. Some authors prefer to keep their true identities hidden for a number of reasons. Some authors work in professions that require them to remain anonymous such as in various branches of the military or the CIA. Others simply don’t want to be recognized as the person writing such works and wish to avoid any level of fame or publicity in their personal lives. This is common of people who have written especially successful books or books in genres that aren’t always taken kindly to.

Other authors, particularly women, find it necessary to adopt a male or gender neural pen name in order to prevent being discriminated against by sexist men who refuse to read books written by female authors. It’s been found that such sexism occurs even with boys who are far less likely to read a book written by a girl - a famous example of this is J.K. Rowling who adopted her pen name at her publishers insistence because they believed boys would be less likely to read a fantasy book written by a girl even if it was about a young boy. This also happens when women choose to write or male dominated industries like western, science fiction, and war or crime novels. This can help increase their sales and protect their identity as a woman writer. This was a common practice in the eighteenth century and many women of that time used male pen names so that their books would be given equal treatment in a gender biased world.

Some authors simply chose a pen name for practical reasons. If their name is particularly hard to spell or pronounce or if it is in use by a great many other authors it can be a very good idea to change it to avoid confusion and to make it more appealing to the general public in much the same way actors and actresses change their names to make them sound or look better. Similar things are done to make names appeal more to readers of certain genres. Strong sounding names are better in western and action novels where more romantic and flourished names do well in romance novels. Writers will commonly use different pen names for different genres or for work that is very different from their own or if they are under contract and can’t write under their own name except on certain projects.

However there are many authors who just choose to stay with their give names although some of these will sometimes adopt a new name during a certain point in their career - for various reasons. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not new writers should pick pen names or just stay with their own name and ultimately it’s a personal decision. Take the time to look up some of your favorite authors and see if they’re using their real names or not!