Pseudonyms

[PennLady]

Found this about pseudonyms; it's an excerpt from a book. Haven't had a chance to read the whole thing, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/...books/feature/2011/06/12/nom_de_plume_excerpt

 

[3113]

Oh, boo, Pennady! The article promises one thing "the pseudonym in decline thanks to digital age" and delivers another. I feel like I was promised an interesting meal and given a big Mac instead.

It doesn't even touch on the big book chains and their role in the rise of the pseudonym where if one book by an author didn't sell well (possibly because they got a bad cover), the chains wouldn't order that many next time, less would sell, and on down the author went. Unlike in the good old days of independent bookstores where the owner actually knew his readers and authors and would buy accordingly, not just because the computer said "hey this author only sold X amount of copies, so order no more than X."

End result? If the author who was killed by the chain bookstore wanted to sell books again, they had to get a new name unknown by the big bookstore computers! They had to pretend to be a completely new author! This still pisses me off, by the way, because it killed off the perfectly fine careers of really good mid-list authors while artificially splitting the reading market into new authors and best sellers, all for the profit and convenience of the big chains. Ask me if I feel any sorrow at their demise thanks to the digital age and the rise of authors able to sell directly as many copies of their work as the public wants...

And I really don't see how the digital age has eradicated rather than proliferated pseudonyms. I knew an author who used his real name on the internet, got into a huge argument on a forum, and damaged his sales. There was a guy who used his real name for his erotica and then tried to run for office in his small, conservative town. Guess what came up on the internet? Guess what happened? I think wise writers, like wise politicians, have learned to never be themselves on the internet. And thus pseudonyms are not only alive and well, but ubiquitous. The only thing the digital age does is make it harder for best selling authors to maintain pseudonyms as people do go digging to find out who they are and the internet makes it easier to discover if they wrote under other names.

But the rest of us small sales writers? Pseudonyms have never been more alive and well, and, as missed entirely by the article, necessary.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

NONSENSE.

Give them something to talk about, give them something to figure out. And make goddamn sure they spell your name right.

People love scandal and notoriety. The middleclass hate scandal and notoriety cuz theyre timid and have no principles. So fuck them.

If your wares are quality stuff, and youre interesting enough, your wares will sell.

 

[PennLady]

Oh, boo, Pennady! The article promises one thing "the pseudonym in decline thanks to digital age" and delivers another. I feel like I was promised an interesting meal and given a big Mac instead.

Well then blame Salon.com, not me. I said I hadn't been able to finish it before posting.

The problem may also be that this wasn't an article, but an excerpt from a book. More of the surrounding context might have helped.

I thought it was interesting, or might be, because all of us here, or nearly all of us, who post stories do so under a pseudonym. Plus, I publish e-books under a still different name, as do many others I know.

 

[sr71plt]

I thought it was interesting, or might be, because all of us here, or nearly all of us, who post stories do so under a pseudonym. Plus, I publish e-books under a still different name, as do many others I know.

Even in my nonerotic publishing, I write under different pen names. (Even when I was writing entertainment columns for newspapers, I wrote in both real and pen name, depending on what I was reviewing--and what paper I was reviewing it for).

I'm adding pen names; nothing happening in the digital world is prompting me to trim them down.

 

[oggbashan]

I don't agree with the article.

All of us play different roles every day: e.g. parent, child, worker, boss, anonymous passer-by and react differently in each role.

Using a pseudonym, particularly when writing erotica, is simple self-defense. Our roles as writers of erotica could easily damage our other roles.

Using a pseudonym is also useful in many areas of the internet. If I get an email stating that my bank account is frozen unless I provide answers to some security questions, I can happily ignore it. oggbashan doesn't have a bank account. Jeanne D'Artois doesn't have one either. Nor does she need Cialis or Viagra no matter how odd the email's spelling is. Nor are either of us "Beloved in Christ" to Nigerian scam peddlers.

Of course it can get out of hand. Oggbashan is a pseudonym who invented Jeanne D'Artois who wrote a story in which Fag-Ash Lil appears. So Fag-Ash Lil is an invention of an invention of a pseudonym. But Fag-Ash Lil, whisper it quietly, is based on a single real person now deceased. So Fag-Ash Lil is possibly more real than oggbashan...

Pseudonyms are useful to divide and separate the many roles we play from a single one - writing stories. If we want to write more than one sort of story, or want to experiment away from what our readers expect - then another pseudonym gives the reader no preconceptions.

If I do want a bank account as oggbashan - my bank will provide such an account as long as the Taxman is aware that any of oggbashan's income is to be aggregated with the income of the real me. Privacy is acceptable. Defrauding the taxman is a crime.

I could even have cheques printed as "<real name> trading as oggbashan" which would mean any payments to oggbashan would be credited to my real name but that would defeat the purpose of a pseudonym.

 

[estragon]

Or, As a Much Better Writer Put It

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

 

[Jake Marlow]

Jake Marlow is a pen name and I recently started using a female pen name, Kirsten McCurran, to see if it makes any difference to sales. It is transparent to my longtime fans, much like Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, but if someone just stumbles across the work on Amazon or B&N they wouldn't know. I am putting effort into making "Kirsten McCurran" an entirely different persona, though, with a fake bio and everything. And the stuff I'm posting as Kirsten is written from a stronger female POV.

 

[Firebrain]

Rubbish. Authors now have to be more prolific. This means they will likely end up writing in more than one genre, and the publisher will often request that they write under a different name. Author branding is more prominent than it ever was (not sure if it actually works, but there you go).

 

[sr71plt]

Rubbish to the article, not to Jake's posting, right?

 

[mynameisben]

I read the excerpt. While I thought it raised several interesting issues, I don't think the business of pseudonyms really pertains much to me. I only use one when I stay at Spanky's Motel. Even then, I only use it for 15 minutes at a time.

 

[PennLady]

I don't think pseudonyms are going anywhere anytime soon. People will always want to hide or protect their identity, even if it's not that hard to figure it out. I use PennLady here and Eve McFadden for my books for a few reasons. One, I don't think my real name is... catchy enough? for the stuff I write. Also, it provides a layer of security, thin though it may be. As someone else posted earlier, many of us run risks, professionally or otherwise, in writing erotic stories. Now I don't think I do personally, but still, I like to keep things separate. I'd also imagine that having a pen name might allow some to assume another role or persona which makes them better able to write in whatever genre.

It may be more difficult to hide real names now because of the internet and the availability of information, but it'll hardly stop people from using pen names.

 

[TE999]

An entire book about the rationale for choosing one or more pseudonyms? What? That sounds like a Masters thesis to get an MFA in Literature. I think I'll skip that one unless I run out of sleeping pills.

I always thought nom de plume sounded better than pseudonym anyway.

 

[Loring2]

I read the excerpt. While I thought it raised several interesting issues, I don't think the business of pseudonyms really pertains much to me. I only use one when I stay at Spanky's Motel. Even then, I only use it for 15 minutes at a time.

Anyone who writes to make a living and is published regularly in more then 1 genre should use a pen name. If you don't, you'll be sorry.