What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a pen name?

Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a pen name?

Answer 1

Different authors take their pen names for different reasons. The Brontë sisters adopted male names as they felt they would either not be published at all, or not taken seriously as women authors. Others do so for fear of violence or harassment, for example Ibn Warraq. Others do so to segregate different types of work: Lewis Carroll, used his real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, to write academic papers on logic; Agatha Christie wrote romantic novels as Mary Westmacott. Some writers, particularly in genre fiction, are so prolific that they are forced to take pen names in order to sell their books to different publishers: this is the case, for instance, with John Dickson Carr, who, in the 1930s, was publishing two detective stories a year under his own name and another two, through another publisher, under the pen name Carter Dickson. Pseudonyms are not always secret: Stendhal's real name was known by his contemporaries.

A disadvantage is that you don't get credit for your work.

Answer 2

Advanatage of using a pen name is that nobody will know who is doing the writing and you can be totally annonymous! Pen names are great. I have family members that are published writers and they all use pen names, because they do not want to be known by the public! I cannot think even one disadvantage of using a pen name. If you do not want people to know where you live, what your phone number is, etc..and if you do not want to be in the eyes of the spotlight and be at risk for being stalked, then please..use a pen name!!!

Answer 3

When using a pen name, in any document, the advantages are wonderful.You can disguise yourself with an alias that is all your own.Pen Names can be versions of your real name (J.K. Rowling,J. R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, etc.), or they can be as completely fictional as your stories (Lemony Snicket, Mark Twain)
There is no end to the reasons that authors choose to use a pen name over their real name, some of them being that their real name is long, and/or boring, so they decide that everything would just be better, to shorten it.As for the completely made up pen names, well, It's just plain fun!

Answer 4

Authors choose pen names for all kinds of reason. I have a friend who has more than 1,200 magazine articles to her credit. She uses a variety of pen names. Some publications prefer that articles be written by males. With those publications, she uses a male pen name. The magazine knows who exactly she is, but those that read her writings probably don't.

The author best known as Victoria Holt (real name Eleanor Hibbets) also used the pen names of Jean Plaidy and Phillippa Carr.

Answer 5

The advantages: anonymity, the ability to separate out your different writing projects (especially if you write very fast or do vastly different types of writing). Also, if you need to keep your personal life and professional life separate (some professors, doctors, etc. use pen names), or if you've always wanted a really neat name and yours isn't .

Disadvantages, people don't know that YOU are the one who wrote this. Old schoolmates, friends won't know it was you. There is something very satisfying about seeing your own name on something.

Answer 6

it may cover one's identity. Stephen King wrote decrease than the pen call Richard Bachman for a number of his novels. Samuel Clemons used Mark Twain as his writing regulate ego. to 3 authors it quite is a novelty; to others they like to proceed to be nameless. some have poor names and use a pen call interior the hopes that extra books will sell.

Answer 7

no real disadvantages unless you're already established as a writer - but even then, it may allow you to branch off in another direction you;re not associates with.

advantages: some genres (sci-fi/fantasy) are dominated by male writers, so a female may want to use a pen name to break in (for example).

Answer 8

Anonymity and anonymity.