You may be asking yourself, what is a pen name. Well, the definition made simple is. "A name chosen by a writer to use instead of using his real name when publishing books" Are you wondering why an author might want to not use his, or her real name. Well there are many reasons. We will look at some of them here. Naturally as a writer you dream of seeing your name on the cover of a book you've worked at. It brings you happiness and pleasure to flip the pages knowing you wrote every word. So why would you ever not want the world to know it. Often times if you are writing about personal things, like about your life, family members. Exposing details can cause friction, so it could be better to write under a fictional name they would not know, and would not damage your relationship with family members. Another reason is if you are working at a job, and are afraid others will look down on you if they knew you were writing in a genre totally opposite of what they believe about you. For instance, maybe you are a real tough man, but you secretly want to write romance, but don't want to lose your manly toughness you portray at work. So a pen name could be the way to go. Perhaps you already have a book in print, but the sales are poor. Under a pen name you could write another novel without carrying the stigma of that book that didn't sell so well. This would give you a fresh star,t and possibly get you new readers. Perhaps you want to write an article to expose crime and corruption in your city, and focus on a certain mobster. Definitely a pen name is called for here. It could be dangerous to your health if you used your real name. Sometimes your real name may already be in use. For example if your name is Nora Roberts. Well that name is already out there, and people will think you are that great mystery writer, when you just happen to have the same name. So maybe you want to chose some way to make your name a bit different from hers.
Maybe you have a really hard name to pronounce, or you feel in not to memorable. You might want to shorten it, or choose one that sounds fancy, and memorable. Often a writer who is well known in one genre, wants to try their hand at writing in another. A pen name keeps then safe just in case all doesn't go well, and their efforts fail. They still have the fan base built from their books of success
in the genre they are famous for. So many writers that are famous use pen names, why not you.
Check the link below and see some famous writers who do!
https://manybooks.net/articles/10-famous-authors-who-wrote-under-pen-names
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