I am reading a book by Ed McBain, who writes the 87th precinct novels. He also writes under the name Evan Hunter, who wrote Blackboard Jungle, among others. This is not the first time I have seen a writer (Stephen King for example) write under more than one name. I can see perhaps they don’t want to get pigeonholed(?)? The kicker is in the latest Ed McBain book, there is a excerpt from the new “thrilling novel by Evan Hunter and Ed McBain”. Huh? I am stymied. I know someone on the SDMB will be able to tell me what the hell is going on here.
Maybe he ran out of his meds 
I don’t know about Ed McBain specifically, but I’ve seen something similar on other authors who use more than one pen name. Often, when one of the names because more marketable, it will be stuck on the book cover with the less popular pen name, like STEPHEN KING (writing as richard bachman) in order to boost sales on a book that would likely be ignored.
In some cases, I’ve seen more that one pen name used because the author is writing in two different genres or styles (like Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters). Some, like the King/Bachman thing are a mystery, since I can’t tell the difference.
If that had nothing to do with your question, apologies.
Hopefully the details are correct:
Stephen King originally published 5 novels under the name Richard Bachman. I dont remember why, but it think it had something to do with the fact that he was SO prolific and didn’t want to flood the market. IMHO, the Bachman novels are also of lesser quality than the work published under King’s own name, and IIRC most were written before Carrie (King’s first published novel) was published. When the fifth Bachman novel Thinner was popular, someone found out about his pseudonym and publicized it. The earlier 4 Bachman books were compiled and published as The Bachman Books with Stephen King listed as the author. Thinner is now marketed as being authored by Stephen King (not Bachman.)
In 1996, the sixth Bachman novel came out, The Regulators. It was published at the same time as the Stephen King novel Desperation. The two stories were linked. I don’t know why he published this under the Bachman name, but I would guess he did it in part just because he could. On the flyleaf of The Regulators, it says “Richard Bachman died in 1985” and that the novel was discovered by his widow. The author picture is of a very young Stephen King.
Evan Hunter is his real name. Well sorta anyway. He was born Salvatore Lombino but has changed his name legally to Hunter. Ed McBain is a pseudonym he uses for many of his police novels, which presumedly he adopted early in his writing career because it sounded better than his real name.
W.E.B. Griffin is another popular author who uses pseudonyms. His real name is William Edmund Butterworth III. In addition to Griffin, he has written books under the names Alex Baldwin, Webb Beech, Walter Blake, Jack McM. Douglas, John Kevin Dugan, Eden Hughes, Edmund O. Scholefield, and his actual name.
O.K… but the same guy is co-writing the same book. Check it out-
how can someone cowrite his/her own book?
Maybe he thinks there are fans out there who have only read one of his pseudonyms, and he’s trying to get them to buy all of his books under all of his names.
Maybe he’s playing a literary joke. Sometimes, an author will take the pseudonym’s character as seriously as any character in the book. The biography you read on the dust-jacket is often as fictional as the contents. (Sort of like screen names and user profiles.)
I have no answer to the specific question regarding a book “co-authored” by Evan Hunter and Ed McBain.
The general question of why writers publish under different names is simply to get published. It was very common in the heyday of the pulp fiction of the 1930s-1950s. Whether or not it continues to the same extent today, I am not sure.
If one is not an author of the financial stature of Stephen King, Tom Clancy, Jackie Collins, or a host of others, being an author of fiction is a pretty good way to starve to death. Royalties are limited and are totally dependent on sales (which can be hurt by such dumb factors as poor advertising or bad cover art). If a person wants to make a living as an author, it helps to have a lot of books in print. Unfortunately, publishers tend to want to “support” only one book at a time by any given author who has not achieved Stephen King status. Submitting two books to the same publisher simply gets one of them returned. However, the same publisher just might accept two books of the same quality from two different authors (or three books from three authors, etc.) Also, a publisher who has decided to reject the works of Mortimer Snavely, might not be so put off by a work of the same quality by John Forthright. By creating multiple noms de plume, an author has a better chance to get a publisher to handle more works simultaneously or to publish one of his/her works while rejecting other works by the “different” author.
An author that has achieved some modest success may also find himself/herself bound by contract to a publisher whom s/he feels is not promoting his/her product sufficiently to pay for the rent. If the contract is with John Forthright, John can submit his works to a different publisher as James Donewell and (providing he has been careful in the wording of his first contract), he can get the second publisher to put out books under the new name. (I have a vague memory that the King/Bachman dichotomy originated from a “no compete” contract situation, but that memory is so vague it may be the result of a hallucination.)
All this information I got from checking out amazon.com.
The novel, Candyland, is told in two parts, one part in Ed McBain’s style, the other in Evan Hunter’s style. Apparently, his fans are able to distinguish the two.
This is not intended as a slam. The only books of Mr. Hunter’s I’ve read are some of the 87th Precinct novels, which I did like.
Harry Turtledove is a prolific SF author. Because of his unusual name, when he first started selling books he was persuaded by his publishers to use the pseudonym Eric G. Iverson. Eventually he changed this and began writing under his actual name.
A few years back he wanted to write a historical novel. But if he wrote it under the name Harry Turtledove and it sold poorly (which could happen because most of his regular fans read science fiction) it would have an effect on his SF sales. When he published his next SF book, bookstores would order fewer copies because his previous non-SF book had sold less. So he didn’t want to ruin his high sales-per-book average and published his historical novel under the name H.N. Turteltaub.
Isaac Asimov did it at one point. He wrote his first juveniles under the name Paul French. This was after he was well known.
Robert Heinliein did some writing under a pseudonym, but the name escapes me at this point (Angus something).
Early in his career Michael Crichton wrote under the name John Lange (and had one book under then name Michael Douglas which he wrote with his brother, Douglas Crichton).
Anne Rice has written under the names Anne Rampling and A N Roquelaure.
I know that some prolific romance novelists write under several names.
Heinlein’s pseudonym was Anson MacDonald.
Kingsly Amis wrote a James Bond novel under the pseudonym Robert Markham.
Dean Koontz had several pseudonyms because his publishers assumed consumers associated the author with a certain genre (sort of like being typecast). Since I buy every Dean Koontz book almost the minute it’s released without even knowing what it’s about, this obviously doesn’t matter to me.
I don’t think that the Lucky Starr novels (written as Paul French) were Asimov’s first juvenile works. The reason he gives for the pseudonym in the prefaces is that they were originally intended to spin off into a TV series, but nobody was sure how well the series would go, and he didn’t want his name on it if it tanked. Of course, the series never materialized. He continued to use the pseudonym for all six books, but by the third book, he had completely dropped all pretenses, including things like his trademark Three Laws of Robotics.
Let us not forget A. A. Fair, otherwise known as Earl Stanley Gardner.
[Aside]
IIRC, Stephen King, in the intro to The Bachman Books, explained that he wanted to see if he could do it again. As a successful author, his books were selling on his name alone. He wanted to see how much success he would have as a nobody.
[/aside]
Ah yes… the Anne Rice spanking novels …
So when are we going to see a collaboration between Iain Banks and his cunning SF pseudonym Iain M. Banks?
There are plenty of examples of authors with multiple pseudonyms. And a variety of reasons why they chose them. Often it’s a case of “brand name” – an established author wants to try something different without disappointing readers.
As far as those already discussed, King used Bachman because he didn’t want too many books under his own name to be put out at the same time.
Some other examples:
Barry Malzberg also wrote as K.M. O’Donnell (an hommage to Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore). This created problems for Kenneth M. O’Donnell, Jr. when he started writing.
Meghan Lindholm was critically acclaimed but selling badly. She started writing books as Robin Hobb, which sell quite well.
Tom Disch and John Sladek used the pseudonym Thom Demijohn (quite clever, actually) when the collaborated on a novel.
Nathan Archer is the pseudonym of a very successful SF writer as a way to write media tie-in novels. He even maintains two websites.
Sandy Schofield is the joint psuedonym of Kristine Katherine Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith, also used for media tie-ins.