Pen Names

Why do some authors take on a pen name? We’ve been talking about this over on the AQ discussion boards again. There are so many reasons to take on a pen name (privacy, hiding out from family, hate your name, current name is hard to spell and pronounce, want to write several genres without confusing your audience, etc).

While eating lunch, I opened up Chatelaine–which insists on coming instead of Writer’s Digest which is the magazine I actually renewed through the magazine service, but oh well–and what do I see? An article on why authors take a pen name. Here are a few they listed and their reasons along with a couple others:

Sophie Kinsella wrote a book under the Madelaine Wickham (real name) and then decided to change to writing the Shopaholic books. She figured she needed a new name to represent the change.

Stephen King (Richard Bachman) created a pen name so he could put out more than one book a year

Anne Perry (Juliet Hulme) killed someone as a teenager, did time, then decided to write. She (wisely) decided to keep her past under wraps.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wrote under a man’s name as she felt she would be taken more seriously, and it would also serve to protect her from the scandal of being known as a novelist.

JK Rowling (Joanne Rowling) grabbed another initial (from her Grandmother’s name–Kathleen) to make her name more gender non-specific as her publisher wasn’t sure that boys would want to read about a boy wizard written by a woman.
Carolyn Keene (never was one) was created by a book packager Edward Stratemeyer who also whipped up the series idea “The Hardy Boys” and “The Bobbsey Twins” a well as “Nancy Drew.”

Anne Rice (Howard Allen O’Brien) took the name ‘Anne’ in school (probably the teasing was too much to bear having a name like ‘Howard’ and then took her husband’s last name to finish off the pen name. (Also wrote erotica under the name A.N. Roquelaure.)

Meg Cabot (Meggin Cabot) has written under Patricia Cabot for her romance books, and Jenny Carrol for her teen mystery series, but now uses ‘Meg’ for pretty much everything. My understanding for ‘Jenny Carrol’ was that Meggin was very prolific, yet wasn’t bringing in much money with what her publisher was taking and she wanted to publish more. And hence the secret names began…