Pen Names for Authors: Pros & Cons | iWriterly

should you use a pen name also known as a pseudonym in this video i'm going to talk about the reasons to use a pen name pros and cons of pen names for authors and how to decide on a pen name if you decide that it's the best route for you coming up hey book nerds i'm meg latorre i'm the author of the cyborg tinker which comes out to november 17 2020. if you pre-order a copy and fill out the pre-order giveaway form in the description below you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinker tct merch character art bookmarks books by authors you know and love and much more stay tuned to the end of this video to see if you won this week's prize i also formerly worked at a literary agency on this episode of iwriterly let's talk about the pros and cons of using a pen name also known as a pseudonym and if you see that the format is a little bit different for this video i apologize my mic died that hooks up to my camera and i thought it'd be more important to do another version of recording where i had my nice new live streaming mic so i am doing a like pre-recorded edited live stream for you guys just to make sure that you guys have the content i didn't want to miss out so i apologize for the different setup but my mic died and i was improvising so that's why before we get into today's content hit the subscribe button and ring the bell if you haven't already here on iwriterly we create videos about how to be a successful modern-day author including self-publishing and traditional publishing this video was requested by one of my patrons over at patreon thank you so much to kayleen for requesting this topic this video is dedicated to you if you'd like to have a video dedicated to you or a specific topic covered here at iwriterly be sure to hop on over to my patreon and one of the upper tiers you do have access to my suggestions box so link in the description below if you want to learn more last mini announcement before we got into the heart of today's discussion i am wearing one of our teespring merch designs hopefully you can hear me because i'm super far away from the microphone but it's the cyborg tinker long sleeve women's flowy tee i just love it if you want your own and be sure to check out the iwriterly teespring store without further ado let's chat about pen names this video will be broken down into the following sections number one reasons to use a pen name number two the pros and cons of using a pen name and number three how to decide on a pen name if you choose to use one let's first talk about the reasons to use a pen name the first is privacy or an an ana the first is privacy and or anonymity we're gonna get more into this later but essentially it's you don't want people in your real life knowing that you are writing books the second reason is maybe your legal name is hard to pronounce or spell that doesn't mean if you have a name that's hard to pronounce or spell that you should change it but in the past this has been one of the reasons why people might have used a pending before because maybe they were frustrated that people couldn't say their names properly or people couldn't spell it because if someone can't type in your name into the search bar then they won't be able to find your book so to some extent you do want it to be recognizable but you don't have to change your name if it's hard to say or hard to spell but it's one reason why people might use a pending another reason is you might share a name of someone who is famous whether or not that's that famous person is an author we're going to get into this later but if you are trying to get discovered in something like google and the search engine optimization so and have good seo it might be really really hard to get discovered if you're competing with someone who's already famous the next reason is maybe you have an extremely common name the names that always pop into my head i don't know why it's like john smith or some kind of you know a very common it could be american name it could be another name but maybe you have a very common name and because it's so common it's very hard to be discovered maybe or maybe you want to be unique you want to have some type of a unique name versus a more common name just some reason why you might change it and again not to say you have to get a pen name if you have a more common name and how many megs or megans do you know in the world there's tons of them another reason is maybe you are married and want to use your mated name so maybe you chose to take on your partner's name and you have their last name but you really want to publish your books under your maiden name another reason is maybe you want your gender to be ambiguous but historically a lot of times an adult science fiction and fantasy that was a male dominated market so any women coming into that would make their gender ambiguous based on their author names and then vice versa so maybe you're a male and you want to get into the romance market which has kind of been heavily dominated by females and so you have an author name that might be that the gender is ambiguous i think we are slowly moving away from that and having a little bit more acceptance but the reason for this is that historically even 10 or 20 years ago people thought specifically publishers thought young boys would not want to pick up books by say a female author who wrote young adult or adult fantasy and then same thing with women maybe not picking up books by male authors and obviously that is not an ideal scenario we hope people pick up books because the book looks good they think the writing is a lot of fun and they want to read it versus you know caring about who cares what gender you are when you're writing a book but anyways that has been one of the reasons historically why people may have used a pending another reason is maybe you want to write in different age categories and genres and you don't want your audiences to mix so for this i might think of someone who writes picture books for kids and then they write adult romance you really don't want those audiences to mix first of all for content-wise you don't want young children looking at romance novels and all those sorts of things another reason is for and i think we're gonna get into this later but it's for like the algorithms and things like amazon for discoverability if someone is buying picture books from you and then they're recommended a romance novel like amazon's just not gonna know who to recommend your books to if they're you know you're sharing an audience of something that's so widely different now i do know a lot of authors that write non-fiction and fiction under the same author name you can do that that's a little bit different than something like let's say romance and picture books so you don't have to split it up that way but a lot of times it's just easier for amazon to know who to recommend your book to if you have a very specific audience with a very specific pen name another reason is to have one identity for co-authors so if you are writing books or a book single book with a co-author and you want to have one identity or maybe you guys make an llc under that one identity and then it's easier for payments afterwards again we're gonna get into all that later but that might be one reason why you create a pen name so that two people can write under a single pen name the last reason i'm going to mention for a reason why you might choose to have a pen name is maybe you are famous or successful and another field outside of writing and you want to keep your writing separate from whatever that is the reasons for that are going to be entirely personal but maybe you are very successful in one field and you want to earn your way to success as an author or maybe you're very successful in one field but you just don't want people to know about your writing books or whatever the reason might be that might be one way to kind of keep things separate the advice that i'm going to give in this video is specifically for genre fiction authors like most things on the iwriterly youtube channel all the content that i have is specifically geared towards genre fiction however i will say that if you are writing non-fiction a lot of times you simply cannot use a pen name because your experience and audience in real life is what gives you credibility to talk about whatever you're talking about in non-fiction so for example if you're a surgeon and you wrote about your experience as a surgeon you're gonna need to use your real name [Music] now let's talk about the pros and cons of pen names we're gonna start with the pros first number one is distinction if you have a common name or a name that someone else already has maybe they're famous maybe they're not this is one way to distinguish yourself by using a pen name as i mentioned before if you have a name of someone that's already famous like stephen king or someone that's famous that's not an author it's gonna be really hard to build good seo search engine optimization and be discovered when authors google your name instead if you pick a name that is not in use and maybe there's no one competing for seo it's much easier to get discovered and have people finding you and your books number two is anonymity for this you might be wanting to separate your personal life from your writing life this could be for the people working in corporate and their employers or fellow employees wouldn't be accepting of their career as an author a lot of people who write romance or erotica will use a pen name especially if they work in some type of corporate setting or have some type of other business kind of thing that they do or run or participate in to keep those things separate and that's not to say you have to and that's not to say you should be ashamed if you write romance or erotica you do you but if you want to have some separation that's one of the reasons why some people might use a pen name or maybe you don't write in romance or erotica but you want to separate your novels from the people in real life you don't want the people that you know your community your family members and friends you don't want them to know that you're writing books for whatever reason also you can theoretically publish a book in the hopes of becoming a career author down the road without your boss knowing that that is a goal of yours theoretically number three is you get to choose a name you like maybe you hate your first name maybe you hate your last name this is an opportunity for you to get to choose your own name the fourth pro for using a pen name is that you get to distinguish the different genres that you write in if you're using different pen names for different genres assuming you're writing across multiple genres this is a really easy way to distinguish your different audience or rather hone in on these different audiences for example if you write science fiction and romance under a single pen name your viewers your readers might get a little confused and you know if they want science fiction books and they see these romance books recommended to them they're gonna be like what the heck i don't want these or vice versa the romance reader seems like i want to read science fiction so it's you're better able to hone in on a single audience if you have different pen names for different genres and audiences amazon search algorithms for example will better know who to recommend your book to when people are searching in amazon if you are able to you yourself hone in on your audience it's kind of like youtube where they always tell you to niche down find your ideal audience be the expert in the one thing same thing for authors and their pen names number five is creating a brand pen names are a powerful branding tool they often allow writers to evoke a certain tone plus it might be easier for readers to associate you with a certain genre or certain field number six is the freedom to start over i've heard of authors specifically in the traditional publishing landscape who maybe published a book under one name it could be their legal name it could be a pen name maybe that book didn't sell very well and then publishers aren't really interested in other books they write maybe a standalone or a different series or whatever because that first book didn't sell very well there sometimes they make the assumption business-wise that you know maybe readers just aren't interested in what this author has to say or maybe they're getting a lower advance lower royalties worse deals because of their previous publishing history because once you publish a book traditionally everyone is going to have access to the sales records so if maybe that author name or book flopped if you start with a new pen name and then your agent then submits the book under this new pen name you're a debut author again you get to have start over and have a fresh clean start and so then maybe the next book takes off and then it's kind of like again you start over you get to move forward with that success kind of in your history number seven is avoiding family controversy if you have unscrupulous family members who are doing things that you don't agree with well this might be a really good way to separate yourselves from them and just have your author career be your author career and it's separate from your family now let's talk about the cons of using a pen name the first is you have to start an author platform from scratch so if you're using a pen name and you don't want anyone to know it's you in real life then you couldn't lean on family or friends to maybe share your posts or like if you're doing posts on social media you know sometimes you'll be like hey would you mind sharing this for me to help me get the word out there you couldn't do that if you're trying to remain anonymous and not have people in your real life know you know you're writing these books and doing these things instead you'd have to market yourself through things like content marketing advertising and so forth which means a lot of research up front that you would have to do to kind of be discovered the old school way or kind of through more traditional means essentially you want to learn how to stand out in a crowded place number two is the more pendings you have the more you have to juggle the first and most obvious is social media platforms a lot of times new authors and really all authors these days are encouraged to have some type of social media presence so if you have multiple pen names and you are on places like youtube instagram twitter whatever you have to make a new account for every single pen name you have so you might be managing two instagrams two youtube channels two twitters and that can get really overwhelming really quickly unless you have like a brand and then you are open maybe about all these different pen names that you have and i think a really good example of this is the creative pen joanna panna publishes under a handful of different pen names and she's very open about it and she talks about that under her brand the creative pen so she didn't have to create tons and tons of different author profiles so i do think that she has a few but the point is if you're under one brand you might not have to make two ins like two instagrams two youtube channels and so forth another thing you'll have to double up on is author website so if you were an author in i don't know science fiction and then an author in romance and you will have two pen names so you know one for each that's two author websites you're gonna have to create and maintain you'll also probably have to have two different newsletters or maybe two different segments within your newsletter and it's you know obviously more things to learn how to do you might have two different emails so maybe you set up two different gmail accounts for your two different author pen names the third con is more time between books under a single pen name if you publish under multiple pen names and you write slower that's a lot of time theoretically between each book under a certain pen name so if you write maybe a book a year and you write one book under this pen name and then you write one book under this pending by the time you get back to that first pen name that's a lot of down time in between and so people consumers might assume that the author is no longer writing that pen name is dead if you have too much time between books it also means you might lose some of that discoverability on places like amazon or different retailers because the more you publish and the more you sell the more the retailers website will start to pick you up and recommend you to more readers and so if you have a lot of time between each of the books for your pen names those retailer platforms might not be recommending your books because again you don't have a lot of activity going on number four is getting paid might be complicated with a pen name you have to prove who you say you are depending on where you live and i'm going to specifically talk to folks living in the united states you might have to file a dba or some type of equivalent or maybe you make an llc and then publish and keep everything housed under that llc then the cons for creating an llc is that depending on where you live especially in the states like which state you live in it could be very expensive and then a lot of times you don't reap the benefits of starting an llc until you hit a certain financial bracket the fifth con and it's gonna be it's gonna sound confusing but i promise i'll explain it is reader loyalty if you decide you want to write under multiple pen names and maybe the audiences would overlap for these pen names a lot of times audiences will become loyal to a specific author pen name but if you're like hey i'm actually also this person and i write these types of books they might not be interested because again they are loyal to that specific author name [Music] if you decide a pen name is what's best for you here are a few tips to deciding on the best pen name for you my first tip here is to look for what's available in other words look for pen names that aren't currently in use search on google amazon goodreads other retailer platforms to see if there are other authors who are writing books under that particular pen name or even like a similar pen name and then do a quick google search to see if there are any famous people that work under that name you really don't want to build yourself an uphill battle trying to be discovered if someone else is already famous or whatever on the internet with that particular name i recommend to not use a pen name if it's already in use and then don't pick a name that's the same or similar to someone else if you can't try to differentiate my next tip is to decide what's important for you i can give you all these tips but ultimately you have to decide what's most important for you do you want to have a name that is easy to spell or pronounce is it important for you to pick a name that blends with a particular genre is it important for you to have a name that is gender neutral is it important for you to use your maiden name and so forth my last tip is to decide how you want to proceed with copyright if your reason for using a pen name is privacy or anonymity you will probably want to consider how you want to proceed with the copyright you probably don't want to file it under your legal name because if someone looks up a book's copyright they could see your legal name so the one way that you could get around this is to create an llc and have the copyright be with that particular llc i am not a lawyer this is not legal advice do your own research ask professionals in the industry what they recommend but that will be one thing you'll want to consider is that if you're using a pen name and you want to keep your legal name private you gotta figure out then a way to work around the copyright all right that is all the tips i have for today and now it's time to announce the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway for the cyborg tinkerer the winner of this week's pre-order giveaway is this person you will be going home with a paperback of i am mercy by mandy lynn thank you so much to everyone who has pre-ordered a copy of the cyborg tinkerer and stay tuned for a future episode where i announce a winner thanks for tuning in to this episode of iwriterly pen names for authors cyborg tinkerer is available for pre-order and paperback hardcover and ebooks on most major retailers the audiobook is also in the works and depending on when everything is finalized that might be up for pre-order too so all the links are in the description below if you pre-order a copy of the cyborg tinker and fill out the pre-order giveaway form in the description below you will be entered to win one of more than 30 prizes some of those prizes include signed copies of the cyborg tinkerer tcd merch character art bookmarks books by authors you know and love and much more if you want to support what i do join me on patreon i currently have six tiers with a bunch of different perks including an exclusive discord server early access to weekly videos discounted merch and more the link is in the description below hit the like button subscribe and ring the bell to be notified every time i upload a video if you questions or requests for future videos please do drop them in the comments below let's be friends on social media i'm on twitter and instagram i also have a monthly newsletter when you subscribe you'll receive free copies of how to format your manuscript for submission which is a word document template a querying checklist a self-publishing checklist and a book marketing checklist you will also have first access to any information about the publication journey and status of my books all the links are in the description below that's it for today as always keep writing [Music] you

Channel: iWriterly

Views: 19,085

Rating: 4.926403 out of 5

Keywords: writing tips, best writing advice, writing advice, pen name, pen name tips, pen names, pen name or real name, choosing a pen name, pen name for writers, pen name for authors, pen name pros and cons, pen name real name, pseudonym, writing advice for beginners, choose a pen name, pen name help, pen name ideas, should i use a pen name, pen names for writers, meg latorre, iwriterly, authortube

Id: c0FmBe-RVes

Length: 19min 56sec (1196 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020