Why bother? If you believe in what you’re saying, say it with your own voice.
Well, I never said that they would remove an entry. I simply said that the librarians would probably be aware of the connections between a pseud and a real name and would share this info with patrons.
Like MrAtoz said, “In the case of authors who write under multiple names (or, as we say in the library biz, “separate bibliographic identities”), the Library of Congress maintains multiple name authority records, with cross-references between the names in question. Thus, Richard Bachman and J.D. Robb each have their own authority records, completely separate from the authority records of Stephen King and Nora Roberts.”
For that matter, it depends if you want your name to be recognised or not.
[QUOTE=MrAtoz]
This doesn’t seem to be so in the specific case of Nora Roberts. I did a bit of browsing at her website (noraroberts.com, if you’re interested). In this case, J.D. Robb does seem to be literally a “separate bibliographic identity.” She is still actively publishing under both names. Robb appears to be a pseudonym established specifically for the purpose of changing her genre slightly. The Roberts books are straight romances; the Robb books are romances set in the year 2058–making them technically SF, I suppose, although they never seem to be marketed that way. As you can see if you look at her site, she doesn’t make any secret of this. I was also somewhat amused to see that Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb are scheduled to collaborate on a novel this year.
[QUOTE]
That’s definitely a marketing issue. Bookstores order depending on an author’s previous track record. And since the person who makes the decision is usually an MBA who sees books as merchandise, the decision is made solely on the author’s name.
Roberts may sell, say 50,000 copies of her romance books. Her SF romance books don’t sell as well – say 20,000 copies (I’m making up the numbers as an example).
So the MBA looks at the record. Say Roberts uses just her own name:
“Romance Novel” by Roberts – 50,000
“SF Romance Novel” by Roberts – 20,000
Now the MBA who is looking only at the author’s name sees a pattern – a big drop in sales for Nora Roberts. So when “Romance Novel II” by Roberts comes out, he’s going to order fewer copies (some actually order only the amount previously sold, which guarantees the author will fail).
So Roberts uses a pseudonym. The MBA sees these sales figures:
“SF Romance Novel” by Robb – 20,000
“SF Romance Novel II” by Robb – 25,000
That’s taken as a good sign.
As far as Robb and Roberts collaborating, Pat Murphy collaboarated with two of her alter egos in Wild Angel by Mary Maxwell, by Max Merriwell
Yeah, Harry Turtledove is doing that for his straight historical novels (as opposed to his alternate history stuff). His publisher feared that the straight novels would depress orders for his more popular stuff so H. N. Teitelbaum was born.
Another reason during the old pulp days was so an author could have more than one story in a specific issue. Robert Heinlein wrote under several pseudonyms for this purpose.
Besides marketing, there’s sometimes a appropriateness issue. Daniel Handler, for example, wrote a couple fairly mature (i.e., you probably don’t want little kids reading them) novels, so when he decided to publish a series of children’s books he used a pseudonym, Lemony Snicket, so that unsuspecting kids wouldn’t pick up his adult novels and suddenly start asking “Mommy, what’s Satanism?”
Ed McBain and Evan Hunter (the most famous two of Salvatore Lombino’s many pseudonyms) collaborated on the novel Candyland.
The best argument I’ve ever seen is that if an author writes two different types of genre–romance and say, crime drama–and garners a pretty healthy fanbase with both genres, the psuedonyms keep people from getting confused. That way the romance readers won’t pick up their favorite author’s new book and get the shock of their lives.
I’m considering sending a few novels I wrote to a certain publisher…it’s erotica and in some cases, pretty explicit. However, I also have other plans for my life, and I’m thinking that if I do get the erotica published maybe it would be best to do so under a different name so years from now, writing porn won’t have a negative effect on my life. I don’t think it should but I wouldn’t be surprised if it would.
Digest days too. In the '50s Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett would write entire issues of some sf magazines. Some of the mags had house pseudonyms that they would assign to writers.
There were less wholesome reasons. Some editors did not want their writers to sound too ethnic, and some women would use men’s names. There was also the feeling that sf writing was not entirely respectable for real writers or scientists. The famous mathematician Eric Temple Bell wrote some sf as John Taine, for example.
I have a whole book of sf pseudonyms and who they belong to sitting in my collection.
Great, he is the Stone City or Daydreams Mitchell Smith.
Stephen King has a book out right now that’s under a pen name called, “The Journals of Eleanor Druse.” This is what his upcoming show Kingdom Hospital is based on. It looks pretty cool to me.
(I haven’t read the above posts, so forgive me for repeats)
It’s the same as having a different name on the internet (kind of).
It’s what people want to go by… rather than their real name. Somewhat to hide identity, somewhat to give an air of mystery behind their name, and then you check out their real name… and by then you’ve read some of their books and your hooked.