Contracts and Pseudonyms

email the editor and ask if it's okay to strike through the "n/a" with a pen and write your pen name above it. I had the same issue, only with the publisher putting my pen name down as my legal one, and that was what they had me do.

(this was a German publisher, so it may be different elsewhere)

If it's hypothetically from an epublisher who sends e-contracts, just email the person who sent it to you and tell her you are using a pseudonym. Mine let me click and type in my pseudonym. YMMV

Hurrah!

Congrats!

Even when publishing under a pseudonym, contracts should be signed using your real name, just as and checks the publisher sends will be in your real name.

It's a bad, bad idea to have contracts signed using your pseudonym, just as it's a bad, bad idea to have checks sent to you bearing your pseudonym.

And it just is not necessary. The name on the contract, and the name on the check, has nothing whatsoever to do with the name on the book cover.

Most publishers I have dealt with ask you for both your real name and any name you wish to write under as part of the submission (even if you only want to specify things like only using your initials or using your middle name etc) and should therefore include this on the contract. The format I was last told to use as part of a publisher's guidelines was to put both names on the front page of the manuscript in the format of 'So and so writing as...' so that it was clear which name was which.

Then all the contracts will be legal (because I think a contract in a fake name is possibly dodgy at the very least... it is legal to assume a different name so long as you don't do so for fraud and using that name to sign contracts might be seen as fraud, possibly...) and you wil get paid in a way that means you can claim the money as your real self (again, opening a bank account in a fake name could possibly be seen as a little dodgy... besides, most banks I know require valid ID before they let you open an account and PayPal, which many get paid by now in small press, is less useful without a bank account to pay it into...)

Jamesaritchie said:

Even when publishing under a pseudonym, contracts should be signed using your real name, just as and checks the publisher sends will be in your real name.

It's a bad, bad idea to have contracts signed using your pseudonym, just as it's a bad, bad idea to have checks sent to you bearing your pseudonym.

And it just is not necessary. The name on the contract, and the name on the check, has nothing whatsoever to do with the name on the book cover.

Click to expand...

You completely misunderstood. The contract listed her real name and also "writing as" pseudonym. But she signed with her real name.

Yay, glad they corrected their mistake! It really is important to have your pseudonym specified correctly on your contract (which, of course, you sign with your legal name).