How do I submit under a pen name in Submittable?

A pseudonym is no guarantee of anonymity. There are all sorts of ways your true identity can be discovered: it's happened to so many people. So if it's absolutely essential to you that your employer doesn't know you've written these works, don't submit them anywhere.

If you do decide to submit them, it's usual to give your name as, "Anna Iguana, writing as Bob Gecko". How this would work on a submission form I don't know, as they're all different. But yes, if you only give them your pseudonym you are going to run into trouble when it comes to payment.

I see no problems in using a pseudonym: lots of writers do it. But as I said upstream, don't expect it to be a fail-safe when it comes to keeping your real name out of the proceedings.

Have you tried contacting the publisher with this question? That'd be my first step.

Wait till you retire. You can spend the intervening years publishing humorous verses about cats or whatever else catches your fancy. (T.S. Eliot wrote some great cat stuff.) Ripping your heart out of your chest and tossing it at the feet of the slack jawed, shambling public is not always the wisest beginning. Eliot was a banker. He was careful not to tell too much. Emily Dickinson tossed her best verse in a trunk. Edward Taylor waited 200 years to be published. I'm not being flip. I live in a small, stifling place and had a sensitive job also. Wordsmithing is great work if you can get it to pay the bills, but bread and butter are also important.

I would suggest to avoid spending money on a submission service and that you go ahead and indie publish under a pen name with a gmail account using that name.

Poets used to be the rock stars of literature, now they are largely ignored by the writing community and publishers. Not fair, and it means a limited submission pool for one's works. You can certainly do direct submissions to poetry venues, with "Jane Smith writing as John Jones" so the editor knows you want anonymity. This is respected by the publishers, but since it is a central issue for you, then indie publishing means an extra layer of safety.

Should you sub directly, then use the resources of POET'S MARKET 2017. Your library should have a copy in the reference section or in the stacks in the 808 section with other books on writing.

There are a LOT of poetry scammers out there, who are too happy to take advantage of writers. Always google the name + "scam" or "ripoff" to check them out. Never be in a hurry and NEVER give them any money. One of my friends was so proud when he won a poetry contest. He was told it had a special spot in a winner's book, which would cost him only 89.00 + S&H to get a copy. There were 800 other poems in the book. It probably cost the "publisher" about 3.00 to produce. I bit my tongue and let him have his illusion, he was too fragile to know he'd been conned.

As for self-pubbing, it's easy and free, and you can DIY via venues like Kindle, Createspace, Kobo, Smashwords, Nook, etc. DO NOT sign on to Kindle Unlimited. I think that's the name. The publisher has a pool of money and writers who sign on get a portion of that pool rather than royalties from sales. I fell for it. They had 3 million bucks to share around to the writers. That is a problem when you have 2 million writers all wanting a share of 3 mil. In the meantime Kindle keeps money from the sales.

Do your research on each of them. It's Adulting and not fun, but you retain full control of your works and identity when you do it right.

You can find / design your own cover and promote the book on social sites using your pen name.

Hope this helps!

Anna Iguana said:

Gilloughy, thank you for the suggestions. Submittable is sort of a submission service, I guess, but I'm not sure it's what you're thinking of. It's a software platform that many literary journals and mags (for example, Ploughshares, Paris Review, Kenyon Review) now use as their sole method for receiving submissions.

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Where did you read that?

The Paris Review's submission guidelines tell you to post your submissions directly to them.

Ploughshares' submission guidelines are here. Again, no mention of Submittable.

The Kenyon Review does use Submittable.

I submitted some things to a few places via submittable. I put my pen name on the form. As I'm writing prose, not poetry, the MS has my actual name and pen name per guidelines. If something gets accepted, I'll be sure to sign contract under my real name and make sure to remind them to make the check out to my real name.

I think I've heard of some writers registering their pen name and signing Real name dba Pen Name?

There are lots of authors who have set up companies to write under. It's for tax reasons, though, and not to give them anonymity. Because all you have to do to discover who they are is look up the directors of the company and you'll find out their real name (assuming they've not signed the business over to someone else, which is a dangerous thing to do).

The cost of running such a business is substantial compared to the return you're likely to get from a collection of poetry. And if you forget about it in years to come and it becomes dormant, or is closed, you'll have lost the rights to all those works with no hope of getting them returned to you.

It's hard to remain anonymus even by using a pen name if someone is eager to find out who you really are. The eager part follows your book success - if there's so much talk about your book, anonymity fails.