Registering a pen name

authorbradyphoenix

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Hello,
I need help!
I'm in the process of working on my novel. I'm having a hard time understanding/setting up everything to establish a pen name. Could you all help me out with it?

Any help is appreciated.
 

ChaseJxyz

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There's nothing you gotta do, don't worry. If you're self-publishing, you just put whatever name you like. If you're going the traditional publishing route, you'll work with your agent on that (you'll need to give them your legal name for contracts n such, of course, but that doesn't necessarily have to be what's ultimately printed).

You might want to get social media handles or websites with that pen name, and you'd sign up for those the same way you would as if you were using your real name.
 

Sonya Heaney

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You might want to get social media handles or websites with that pen name, and you'd sign up for those the same way you would as if you were using your real name.

Yes, just set up your social media accounts so you've got the name reserved on Twitter/Instagram/Facebook etc. There's nothing else you need to do at the moment (except Google to make sure you're not sharing your name with an infamous criminal or a porn star!).
 

authorbradyphoenix

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Thank you all for you quick and helpful responses! Is there anything special I have to do as far as copyrighting or dealing with the royalties? Or am I just overthinking it all? :e2smack:
 

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There is nothing that can be done to make a pen name "official" or "protected". You just use it.

The people that pay you know your real name and tax ID.
 
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Cephus

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There is nothing that can be done to make a pen name "official" or "protected". You just use it.

The people that pay you know your real name and tax ID.

That's the part that a lot of people don't realize. You can't be 100% anonymous to everyone. Anyone who pays you or gets paid by you, they are going to know who you are. Your agent will know, your publisher will know, Amazon will know, all of them have to because they have to file taxes on your behalf so they need your SSN. There is no way that this can ever be a secret from the entire planet. Somewhere, somehow, no matter what you do, someone is going to know.
 
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Chris P

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That's the part that a lot of people don't realize. You can't be 100% anonymous to everyone. Anyone who pays you or gets paid by you, they are going to know who you are. Your agent will know, your publisher will know, Amazon will know, all of them have to because they have to file taxes on your behalf so they need your SSN. There is no way that this can ever be a secret from the entire planet. Somewhere, somehow, no matter what you do, someone is going to know.

And something I didn't realize for a long time is that having a pen name has little to do with remaining anonymous or kepping your real name a secret; most authors I know do it for branding, particularly if they write in multiple genres. That way, when a reader sees the children's author name, they know it's a children's story and not a western, horror, or other genre that be written by the same person.
 
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A pen name is absolutely about branding. Not anonymity.
 

ChaseJxyz

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Thank you all for you quick and helpful responses! Is there anything special I have to do as far as copyrighting or dealing with the royalties? Or am I just overthinking it all? :e2smack:

You can't copyright your name, unless you make your name into a brand (like Gordon Ramsay or Guy Fieri), and even then you're copyrighting/trademarking the BRAND, not your name. Your publisher/agent will handle copyrighting whatever it is that needs to be (titles, character names, series names, what have you).

Royalties will be all sorted out when they hand you a contract. You will have to sign that with your legal name (because taxes/income), but again, that doesn't necessarily have to be the name that's on the front of your book. The checks will be to your legal name, as is the name on the bank account where you go deposit it.

Now, if you want to go about changing your legal name, I have experience with that (in America, at least), so I can help with that (as I'm sure many others here). But at this point you're thinking too far ahead. It's like figuring out what price your book is going to be or the size of the font. You gotta sell it first to get to that point!
 

Que-puedo_contigo?

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A pen name is absolutely about branding. Not anonymity.
Not necessarily true. Sometimes it's about anonymity as well -- for various reasons.


Of course, it's "mostly" marketing and branding, sure, but to say "absolutely" is false, there's romance writers who totally want to stay anonymous due to the nature of the things they write and there's also people who, for various reasons, don't want to be found out, say ex-spouses or the government or whatever.

It's not exactly hard to set up an LLC or even a foreign corporation and keep your real identity hidden from Amazon, examples: Bella Forrest and Russell Blake.

In some cases the pen name is trademarked for reasons to do with tax liability or other personal reasons to stay anonymous -- it's also done for branding and marketing.

For example, to run Sponsored Brands ads (and Amazon Stores) you must have a registered trademark (which doesn't have to be the pen name, it can be the name of your publishing company if you want, but using the pen name kills two birds).

If any wants to see what pen names are trademarked, it's a simple search --- and another trick to see who is offshoring is to look at the newsletters they send out and see if the address is Cypress or some other foreign entity used for tax purposes.
 

Que-puedo_contigo?

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You can't be 100% anonymous to everyone.

Well, you can for all practical purposes, it's just a bit of work and money.

Usually you're still going to reveal your real identity to a few trusted associates, but if you're really trying to keep yourself hidden, you only tell your attorney who is bound by confidentially agreements.

Example: there's a famous indie writer who I happen to know personally, so I know his birth name and the name he's using legally nowadays after ex-patting and then renouncing his US citizenship. The pen name and the legal name aren't connected in any legal way --- the banking and trademarks are handled by corporations (which can be held by registered agents, so, yeah, in certain instances you could discover his real identity via lawsuits that pierced the corporate veil, but good luck extraditing an non-US citizen for a civil suit).

Amazon doesn't know who he is --- and the IRS has no claim on his identity since he's no longer a US citizen and the countries he uses to move money have tax treaties with the states, so Amazon just transfers the money he earns to a Cypress bank, they don't know what person actually represents the pen name selling the books --- and at the end of the day there's no US tax liability.

This does take some forethought but it's not really that hard to set up.
 

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Well, you can for all practical purposes, it's just a bit of work and money.

Usually you're still going to reveal your real identity to a few trusted associates, but if you're really trying to keep yourself hidden, you only tell your attorney who is bound by confidentially agreements.

That didn't work very well for JK Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith.

 
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Well, you can for all practical purposes, it's just a bit of work and money.
It is absolutely not safe to rely on a pen name for anonymity.

We know J. K. Rowling's pen name because someone leaked it before the book was published. It was not supposed to be leaked.

I've worked as a rights licenser; you would be amazed at how many people know the legal names of authors because they were in a meeting, or compiled a P and L report or ran the script that generates royalties. And yes, people in publishing talk about that stuff all the time. I knew who J. D. Robb was well before the first book was an ARC, because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Most people keep their knowledge to themselves, or behind closed doors with trusted peers, but not everyone will do that. You can't rely on it.

Do Not regard a pseud as anything other than a branding decision; you know, you yourself the mom with three kids, and the author writing under a pseud with non-gendered initials.

Or the attorney with a day job, who uses a pseud for his novels, or for his gig as a stripper at Chip and Dales, which is how he's paying off his law school loans.
 
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Roxxsmom

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Another consideration is that authors in many genres are expected to attend cons, book signings and so on to help promote their work. Sure, they do so under their pen names, but that doesn't stop someone who knows them in another context from attending and recognizing them.

Wow, Leila Landrisse, author of steaming hot romances, is really Mrs. Ethyl Mortimer, my kid's third-grade teacher?

Not saying this is a common thing, or that it always creates personal problems when someone finds out, but it can definitely happen.

In the case of an author who is already famous for writing in a different genre, it would be even harder to keep that secret. I seriously doubt Robert Galbraith's true identity would have stayed secret for very long after the book launched, even if Rowling's lawyer hadn't leaked the information.
 
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Que-puedo_contigo?

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I seriously doubt Robert Galbraith's true identity would have stayed secret for very long after the book launched, even if Rowling's lawyer hadn't leaked the information.

Yeah, there were people who recognized the style and also there's computer programs that can make writing styles pretty well.

But conjecture is only that, it takes a betrayer to really confirm something like this.

Which is why, if you really want to keep your name a secret, you'd have to take extra steps -- perhaps difficult, but not impossible.
 

Que-puedo_contigo?

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It is absolutely not safe to rely on a pen name for anonymity.

No, of course not --- but you can do a lot of preliminary steps before you get to the pen name.

If anonymity is really important, it's possible to do via corporations. You can also change your name or even change your citizenship and then set up the pen name via a corporation -- sure, your "trusted" attorney could screw you over, but that would only prove you had poor judgement in attorneys, not that the process isn't possible.