Pen Names: Are They a Good Idea to Use?

 

    When I first self-published back in 2012', I could have never imagined using a pen name.  I mean, after all, I had worked hard on my book, so why would I not want people to know that I wrote it. Why would I want to hide my identity by placing a pen name on it, Right?

     Speed up to today, and I have a whole different perception about using a pen name.  You see, as a self-published, Indie author, this is not the only job that I have.  Since I don't really make a lot with my writing as of right now, I have to work outside my home.  What I do for a living is work as a teacher's assistant.  So you could only imagine when I had decided to try my hand at writing a romance/erotic book how hesitant I was at putting my real name on this book.  This was definitely something I did not want to do, although I thought the story that I had written turned out pretty good. But, the last thing I wanted was for some student to tell me that their mother or other family member found a book with my name on it, written by me with a lot of kinky sex going on in it.  You see my name is not a common name, so I knew that if I placed my name as the author of this book, most people would assume it was me.  I just couldn't take that chance since I work in the area of education.  Plus, what I ended up discovering was that there was a sense of freedom in my writing when I started to use a Pen Name (hence the name E.S. Hart was created), and I have gone on to publish other books with it.

     I also discovered that six out of every ten authors use a pen name, which I thought was quite interesting, and many of them do it for basically the same reason I do.

     Here are a few authors who went on to use a pen name:

• Agatha Christie: Mary Westmacott
• Isaac Asimov: Paul French
• J.K. Rowling: Robert Galbraith
• Stephen King: Richard Bachman
• Erika Mitchell: E. L. James

     So if you wonder if using a Pen Name is the right thing to do, you have to ask yourself first why you might need to use one.  Believe it or not, Pen Names have been used with authors from the beginning of time.  So if you are a new author and you're not sure whether to use a Pen Name let me just reassure you that there is nothing wrong if you choose to go that route.

     In my next blog entry, I am going to talk about the traditional publishing route vs. the self-publishing route.

     So stay tuned.
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