{"id":1201,"date":"2008-04-26T23:27:09","date_gmt":"2008-04-27T03:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1201"},"modified":"2008-04-28T14:15:23","modified_gmt":"2008-04-28T18:15:23","slug":"bookish-bits-pseudonyms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/26\/bookish-bits-pseudonyms\/","title":{"rendered":"Bookish Bits: Pseudonyms"},"content":{"rendered":"

OK, I’m comfortable with the idea of pseudonyms for authors. Sure, when I was a kid and first ran into the concept (I think it was when someone told me that the Eric G. Iverson guy whose stories I liked in the digests had novels under another name<\/a>) I was a little shocked, but I’m used to it now.<\/p>\n

Some reasons seem more sensible than others, though. I mean, I understand someone who wants to go some genre hopping using different names: I’m fine with Banks’ “M”<\/a> (although wouldn’t it have been great if he had gone with Johnny B. Macallan?) or with Micheal Marshall dropping his Smith<\/a>, or even more extreme examples like Stark with Westlake<\/a> or Rusch’s half dozen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Similarly, I understand someone who wants to have simultaneous publications using a pseudonym. Or people who just want to write under different name than the one they were born with.<\/p>\n

However, when authors are forced by the midlist computer-ordering death spiral to take on a pseudonym to keep writing in their chosen genre, that annoys me. It annoys me because it shouldn’t happen, and the fact that it does is the publishing industry putting a patch on a serious problem. (Also, because I am a crazy person who needs to file fiction by author\/series\/date, and who worries about filing pseudonyms with “real” names on the shelf.) Note: I am not annoyed with the authors–just the publisher and the retailers, and the system they have allowed to arise.<\/p>\n

So I’ve got Hobb with Lindholm<\/a>Yeah, I know.<\/footnote>, Glass with Goldstein<\/a>, Bishop with Marley<\/a>, and now Anderson with Zettel<\/a>. And that’s just the women–it seems a more common pattern there, and with the women choosing a more androgynous name for the pseudonym (apparently this helps with sales.) I think I’ve heard Wells<\/a> and Smith<\/a> both also discussing pseudonyms for future work as well.<\/p>\n

And all those aren’t even on the eight page list<\/a> or the other giant list<\/a>. If this keeps happening, my bookshelves are going to be hella complicated–someone better make an up-to-date list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OK, I’m comfortable with the idea of pseudonyms for authors. Sure, when I was a kid and first ran into the concept (I think it was when someone told me that the Eric G. Iverson guy whose stories I liked in the digests had novels under another name) I was a little shocked, but I’m used to it now. Some… Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[26,257,458],"class_list":["post-1201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-anonymity","tag-authors","tag-books","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-jn","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1201\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}