How can I keep my pen name secret?

How can I keep my pen name secret?

There’s an old saying: “Two men can keep a secret, but only if one of them is dead.” If you want to write books that you don’t want anyone to know about, you need to keep that in mind.

On a forum recently, an author shared his success in writing. It was a substantial amount, easily six figures in a month. Naturally everybody wanted to know what kind of books he wrote, how he wrote them, what his covers look like and so on.

Using my Google-Fu, I learned his pen name, and mentioned what I did on the forum. I didn’t expect his reply: “that is incredibly invasive.” He also deleted the post.

I felt bad about this, but at the same time he left himself open to discovery. Since I can’t warn him that if I could find out his pen name others can as well, I decided to write this post to share what I did and how you can keep yourself safe as well.

Why keep my pen name secret?

Privacy. Authors have used pen names from the very beginning and for various reasons. Their work would offend important people. They are writing risque or obscene material. Or they are writing books in a genre that could embarrass publicly.

For example, “Eloisa James” is the pen name for a college professor who didn’t want her colleagues to know she was writing romances (very good romances, I highly recommend them). She has since come out of the shadows.

There are also writers working in one genre under their own name who want a pen name to separate those books from the new genre. British writer John Banville writes literary novels that have been shortlisted for major awards. He also has written seven novels in the Quirke mystery series as Benjamin Black. These are pseudonymous works, done not for privacy reasons but to separate these well-written mysteries from his literary work.

So what if you’re writing erotica and you don’t want anyone to know?

1. Don’t tell anyone. Remember the first rule of “Fight Club.” No matter how close you are to somebody, friend or relative, telling them a secret will tempt them into spreading it.

They can’t help themselves, especially if they don’t see any harm in doing so.

Suppose that you told your closest friend that you are involved in the Kennedy assassination. That’s a pretty important secret, and your friend will probably keep it because they know what would happen to you if it became known you were on the Grassy Knoll on Nov. 22. The consequences are obvious.

But what if the secret was that you were a popular author of science fiction romances involving tentacled aliens with knobby appendages and lonely young women kidnapped to be their wives? How could they not keep that a secret? It’s funny! And besides, they told only that one person, and they promised never to tell anybody either. Soon, the whole congregation knows, and your defrocked and looking for a new job.

There is also the risk that sometime down the road you and your friend will part ways. Or maybe you’ll have a falling out with your relative. If they are angry at you, you’ve given them the perfect weapon to get back at you.

So don’t tell anyone.

2. Keep your name separate from your pen name. This is what tripped up our unnamed author. For some reason, he had listed himself as publisher of one of his books on Amazon. Searching Amazon for his name brought up that book and revealed his pen name.

3. Don’t talk about your secret pen name on private forums. One reason why thought it didn’t hurt to search for his pen name was because he was discussing it under his real name. He also said he was no longer working at [major well-known company] and he was a full-time writer. He clearly was proud of his work and his success (as he should be).

The problem with talking about secrets on private forums is that it violates rule number one. Worse, you’re telling thousands of people what you’re doing, and any one of them can take a screenshot of your post and put it up on social media.

This is what happened to Journolist, a forum of reporters from national newspapers and cable channels. Started by Ezra Klein in 2007, nearly 400 reporters, academics, and authors gathered daily to trade rumors and discuss what stories should be highlighted and buried. This was collusion to set the news narrative at The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and other major news outlets.

The existence of the forum was revealed, and copies of the messages showed how the daily news was massaged. There was much embarrassment all around, but nobody lost their job, nobody apologized, and presumably they found another place to meet that was more secure.

But the point stands: Don’t talk about your secret pen name online or offline. Period.

(If you’d like an alternative view, here’s Anne R. Allen on why it’s a bad idea to write under a pen name. While her reasons are valid, they don’t take into account people who write erotica and more explicit books. They also don’t take into account how Amazon’s Also-Boughts handle authors who write books on widely different subjects. If you’re planning on relying on marketing your books to whale readers, a pen name is useful if you’re writing in widely disparate areas.)