H.G. Higgenbottom --Or Nom De Plumes

There are eleventy bajillion threads on pen names.

My standard answer is thusly: genre distinction.

Also, I write under a pen name purely because I want a name my mother didn't choose for me, as I hate her and respectfully desire that she burn in the fiery pits of hell forever.

That is all.

It's a fact, boys tend to read books written by men. We might not like it, but at least JK Rowling has done her bit to change that. Everyone knows she's a woman now and she's doing all right for book sales.

I've noticed this in M/M erotica though. Lots of initial- and gender-ambiguous-names.

Easy to argue it's wrong, that it shouldn't be required, that readers shouldn't have biases. How to change such attitudes? That would take a crusade.

This said, I've read books by initialed authors who were male (uh... I think), and ghost writers abound, so I don't particularly pay much attention to letters -- the bookstore shelf, the back cover blurb, and a glance at the first few pages usually decide the issue.

-Derek

It's up to the writer whether they want to appear androgynous, I think. Likely Rowling's agent knew better than she did about selling books. I can really only speak for myself as a reader when it comes to sexism. I've never been influenced one way or the other based on the author's gender, even as a kid. So it seems silly to me that boys wouldn't read a book written by a GIRL WITH COOTIES. But like I said, agents probably know better about how to sell books than we do. Certainly I believe Rowling's agent must know a whole hell of a lot about selling books, right?

I published my short stories under a pen name and have used a different one to submit my first novel. Why? People can never pronounce or spell my real last name correctly, and I could see that hindering folks who wanted to track down any of my future books by author's name. Plus, I hate my first name. So my pen name is my middle name (Libbie) plus a last name I made up because it describes my personality and interests, and is easy to spell and pronounce (Hawker).

But I think any reason for using a pen name is a valid one. I'm cool with it. Do what feels right to you.

Also see the current Cross-gender writing thread that's touching on the same subject:

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158296

-Derek