Hi all!
This week I'm going to talk about pen names. For those that don't know, a pen name is an alias an author, or a group of authors, write under instead of their legal name. An example of this is Erin Hunter, who is actually multiple authors writing under one name. Quite a few authors actually use pen names, so I thought I'd make a post explaining the good and bad parts of using one.
Pros.
It hides your identity.
If you don't want to use your real name, you can use a different one. It doesn't have to incorporate anything from your name either.
You can have multiple.
For authors that write in different genres, this is a plus. I want to write Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Horror, but for different genres I need to consider different pen names.
It can be anything you want.
It's your pen name, so you can choose whatever name you want. No-one can tell you what you can and can't use.
It avoids confusion with fans.
Writing under one name for multiple genres can confuse your fans. If they follow you for your thriller series, most of them aren't going to be interested in your historical fantasy. With pen names, you can have multiple aliases that allow you to write in both without confusing fans.
Cons.
It won't protect you legally.
If you steal someone's work or write something that's copyrighted, a pen name will not protect you. Although it is what readers will see, any legal action will require your real name. When signing up for Amazon you have the choice of using a pen name, but the setup process will require your real name. Having a different name does not make you untouchable.
Having too many.
You need to decide what genres require different pen names. Although it's easy to create as many as you want, you then have to manage all these names and the income from them. This can make paying tax tricky and updating readers on new releases.
Creating social media accounts for each one.
Although you might just decide to lump everything into one profile, if you write drastically different genres you will need separate ones. This means you have to update more than one social media profile every so often to keep readers engaged.
That's it for this week, I hope you enjoyed reading! See you next week.
