Pen Names and Other Wordplay
Or, hiding out
I’ll publish a new list of literary agents (#6) with contact information later this week. (The most recent list can be accessed here with a monthly or annual subscription).
One other note: today I have a short story, “Wedding Party,” in Electric Lit’s Recommended Reading, introduced by Elizabeth McKenzie. This story is in my forthcoming collection Direct Sunlight (out on June 15).
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Several months after my third book, the novel Paris, He Said, was published, a combination of cynicism, hubris, and desperation led me to try to write a novel that I hoped would qualify as commercial fiction.
As with any creative project spurred on by the profit motive, I knew this to be a questionable undertaking, but I wasn’t sure how else to appeal to a wider readership than my first three books had found, which are all works of character-driven fiction.
When I asked the agent who represented me at the time if she’d send out this new book under a pen name, she was less than enthusiastic.
I wasn’t sure what accounted for her reluctance, but before long her reasons became clearer. For one, she didn’t want to have to mask my identity when she sent the manuscript to acquisitions editors. The editors would want to know more about who this unknown author was. Part of what they’d be looking for is information they could use to market the book—was the author famous? A former cult member? A blind skydiver? A snake charmer?
If an agent is cagey, the editors are likely to suspect she’s trying to hide something besides the author’s identity—probably a poor sales track, which would make the book even harder to sell.
Also a part of an agent’s calculus: it’s difficult to promote a pen-name book, and with most presses now more or less requiring authors to flog a new title from the moment they sign a contract, one of the key boosters of the book—the author—is removed from the equation.
There’d be no author photo or bio, either—unless you invented an alter-ego, which could open you up to charges of fraud if someone else’s likeness were used. I suppose it’s possible to circumvent this by using a dead relative’s photo, but it would nonetheless be a challenge to do bookstore or other book-promoting events. I don’t advise pulling a JT LeRoy and enlisting your boyfriend’s sister to pose as your androgynous alter ego, an elaborate scheme I don’t think ended well for anyone involved.
The ensuing scandal cost Bloomsbury, LeRoy’s publisher (and my own erstwhile publisher), a fortune in legal fees when the story broke that LeRoy was a fabrication of Laura Albert and Savannah Knoop. It was quite a train wreck—a literary scandal that jumped the tracks to the wider culture because many celebrities had befriended LeRoy/Knoop/Albert, and when the ruse was revealed, they weren’t pleased to have been duped by these two women’s masterful performances. (There’s a good 2016 documentary about the scandal, Author: The JT LeRoy Story, as well as a 2018 feature film starring Laura Dern and Kristen Stewart, JT LeRoy.)
Writers who have had commercial success under their real names sometimes use a pen name when writing in a different genre in an attempt to evade the literary world’s equivalent of typecasting. Many pen names of famous authors, however, are freely admitted to—Irish novelist John Banville has written crime novels under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. Scott Spencer used Chase Novak for his horror novels Breed and Brood.
J.K. Rowling adopted Robert Galbraith as her pseudonym when she began publishing crime fiction for an adult audience ten years ago, and initially, this secret was closely guarded. Her first Galbraith book, The Cuckoo’s Calling, received respectful reviews, but the book sold modestly until her publisher (allegedly) leaked the name of its progenitor.
I sometimes cite Rowling’s Galbraith trajectory in the publishing class I teach—a well-written book with a big press that receives good, even glowing, reviews, along with sales and marketing support from its press does not guarantee robust sales. Once Rowling’s identity was leaked, however, no surprise, the profits came pouring in.
In my case, post-Paris, He Said, I wrote a romantic, comedic novel that I hoped would become a commercial breakthrough. My agent told me she wanted to sell it under my own name—it was well-written and wouldn’t embarrass me, she said. She gave me detailed revision notes that I read over and thought, I really don’t want to keep working on this. I didn’t see it selling if I kept my name on it—another, better novel I’d written had just failed to find a corporate publisher. The idea of publishing a soapy novel under my own name didn’t appeal to me at all, and ultimately, I didn’t revise it. It’s still sitting on my hard drive.
In a future post, I’ll write about my experience self-publishing a young adult novel under a pen name three years ago, which sold about 6 copies. Literally. It certainly clarified (not that I needed much clarification) how difficult it is to market and sell a book.
Coda: Not very long ago, novel-writing wasn’t considered a fit profession for a woman, and female writers were forced to use pen names: Mary Ann Evans wrote under George Eliot; the Brontë sisters were credited as Acton, Ellis, and Currer Bell; Louisa May Alcott published as A.M. Barnard. For different reasons, J.K. Rowling also chose a man’s name. Ironically, I don’t think any single author has outsold Agatha Christie.
Recommendations:
1. BlackBerry - the funniest first half hour of a movie I’ve seen, possibly ever, and the rest is pretty damn good too.
2. Coco at the Ritz, a novel by Gioia Diliberto
3 David Long’s Substack
Love the new story and can't wait for the book!