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anglo-caucasian names, anglo-saxon, author names, book, Ermisenda Alvarez, female authors, gender neutral author names, Harry Potter, jk rowling pseudonym, perseus inkelstain, Robert Galbraith, sales, spanish names, stories, the cuckoo's calling, which penname to pick, which pseudonym to pick, writing
Recently, news has broken out that JK Rowling released a novel under a pseudonym. When I read this, I thought it was fantastic. It would be such a great change of pace for these high profile writers to get a book out there without so much hype and expectation. She could get feedback that wasn’t coloured by everyone’s thoughts on Harry Potter.
What irked me a little was that she chose a male name. Her pseudonym was Robert Galbraith. Now I know the reasoning. I also know the reasoning why she chose initials rather than using Joanne when she wrote Harry Potter. It’s unfortunately true that male or neutral names have been said to sell more than female names. I remember being confronted with this choice when I chose my author penname. I chose Ermisenda as it was the name of my great grandmother who raised my mother as if she was her own child. Her life is one that could be written into a story. How she struggled with her family, a terrible husband, and being ostracized for some time in her own Spanish village. But this isn’t a post about her. I chose the name because I wanted to be identified as a female, and the name had personal significance to me and my heritage.
I could still have chosen a name like E. S. Alvarez. I would know what the E stood for, even if no one else would. Realistically, no one knows what Ermisenda means to me even if I use the uncommon name ‘Ermisenda’ rather than just an E. But I wanted to be identified as a female (if people know that Ermisenda is a female name). I wanted to identify my Spanish heritage with my name (both first and last). Maybe that means that I will lose sales. If so, I don’t care. If by some chance I make a fantastic book that everyone loves and I do get ‘famous’, then I want people to associate great novels with female sounding, Spanish sounding, names.
Maybe it’s stupid logic. I cannot ignore the stats if they say neutral/male names sell more. But there are plenty of women who decided to keep a female sounding name. Without those females becoming bestsellers, maybe all the names in the book market would be neutral or masculine today. In my eyes, it’s a way to make a stand and be a tiny contribution to social change. If I lose sales as a result, so be it.
What do you think? Am I being too idealistic? Should I just listen to the stats and go for gender-neutral, Anglo-Caucasian sounding names?
– Ermisenda Alvarez
Ermilia 
I like your name. I like Eliabeth’s too, as well as the combined Ermilia. My opinion: you should write using the name that you are the most comfortable with.
I also write using the name that I want attached to my stories, although maybe without as much thought or care as to why. I feel like the name comes from my “genius” as much as my stories do, and so there’s my big well-thought-out reason. Haha, F. A. Schilde kinda sounds like it belongs on legal letterhead, dontcha think? And if someone doesn’t read me because I’m female or because my name is Dutch, it’s their fault, not my name’s.
Thanks, Annie. 🙂 F. A. Schilde definitely sounds like it belongs on a legal letterhead. 😛 I agree that it’s their fault not ours BUT those kind of things publishers sometimes do care about. It was an interesting topic for authors I wanted to bring up. 🙂
There is a saying that when your head is stuffed up your ass, the whole world looks like shit. Those publishers just need to pull their heads out.
I look at it this way. Being called Isabel Allende never hurt Isabel Allende. Aside from that, this is the 21st century.
True. And yet I am often shocked with how sexist/racist our societies can be.
I was surprised and a bit irked that she went with a male name. I thought it was great that she chose a pseudonym (I heard one editor turned the book down not knowing who’d written it :p) But I agree with you. It’s important to maintain feminine names and it is unfair that they tend to garner lesser sales.
I’ve been thinking about what I would publish under (should the day ever come :p) and I’ve yet to settle on a name…
I guess everyone has to make the choice for themselves…
Great post 🙂
It’s hard to choose the name because it will be your new ‘name’ or way of identifying who you are as a writer. Did an editor turn it down? Well there you go, JK Rowling still getting rejected. That just goes to show that you can never give up! 🙂
Nah, it just goes to show how totally and completely arbitrary and ridiculous publishers are in what gets published. JK Rowling still getting rejected, even though she’d written something good, just because people didn’t know it was her…proves my point completely. Its all luck and total whim and chance that your stuff gets accepted. Total luck and chance. NOTHING to do with merit at all whatsoever. Its also sickening and wrong that everything JK writes as JK Rowling just gets accepted automatically just because its JK Rowling, name recognition. That’s just wrong. It should be judged on merit and nothing else. Luck and name recognition should have nothing to do with it. If JK writes crap as JK, it should be rejected, not accepted just because she’s JK. Its sickening that its so hard for somebody to be published, to break into the publishing world if they’re a total complete unknown, no matter how talented they are or how great their writing is. They could have the most excellent piece of writing ever and they’d still get rejected ten thousand billion trillion kajillion quintillion times and maybe they’d never even ever get published, whereas somebody who writes a load of vomit but just happens to be lucky gets published. Its sickening and it makes me really angry that its so hard to get published and to get recognized as a writer and to have your talents recognized!
“Its all luck and total whim and chance that your stuff gets accepted. Total luck and chance. NOTHING to do with merit at all whatsoever.”
Blimey – that puts ME in my place! 😀
I hear what your saying Scriptor and I agree on numerous accounts. I hate that authors can just publish crap because they have a reputation. I also agree that much of the writing industry is luck and chance (and contacts).
But I do also believe that skill is part of it. That quality of work matters. That’s usually how these ‘best sellers’ start out. There first POW novel was great (or at least good) work. Maybe once they have a reputation, the quality of work slips, that’s definitely possible.
While I believe quality of work matters, I know that the writing industry cares about selling. They want work that sells. Hell when I worked at a bookstore, I couldn’t believe they had Snooki books! So mainstream interests are published. Trying to market books that are very “different” or have very “different” types of plots can be very hard to get published. No matter HOW good it is because it is so different that the publishers don’t know if it will sell. That’s what I think is great about self-pubbing or small publishers in giving new and interesting stories (and ways of storytelling) a way.
Lots of pros and cons to the publishing world and often it seems like little hope for the little writers. But I think with self-pubbing, it will be interesting to see if the ball game changes at all. Whether writers are willing (or even have the time and energy) to invest into themselves and be their own publisher. Or try their odds with the publishers.
i find your name classy
and i think one should stick to originality when i comes to pen names
Thanks, Ayesha. I have always thought originality is a great idea. But I do notice a few ‘copycat’ names at the bookstores sometimes. Maybe not as close but something like Stephen King – Steven Kin. Or things like that. It gets their books close to the books of famous authors. I wonder if it works for sales?
I think she chose a male name just to see what would happen, like as an experiment. Of course, now we’ll never know since the cat’s out of the bag, but still … I have no particular problem with the male name. I know there are lots of male romance writers who use female pen names, so I suppose the street goes both ways 🙂
Oh really? I haven’t heard the street going two ways but that’s fascinating. And kind of sad, that they feel the need to change the gender of their name to get more sales. But that’s the book world at the moment. Or at least, that’s what the readers demand. Thanks for the comment! 🙂 I think she chose a name to see what happened too. It also helped her disguise.
I refuse to use a pseudonym. Why should I hide who I really am? It shouldn’t be that female names don’t sell as well, that’s a little bit…well it doesn’t feel right when we go on about how we have gender equality it many places and areas. My name is my name and I want to recognised under that name for my writing
Wow. I thought I replied to this. Sorry for the lateeee comment (fail me). I totally agree with how you mentioned gender equality. I still think there’s a battle to be fought but how are we going to fight it if all female authors adopt gender-neutral or masculine names? It ain’t going to be won! We need to stand strong with female names. Then prove that we’re amazing authors and that will help reduce the number of sexist readers (I like to think). Female authors weren’t always around, they weren’t allowed to write. So we have to keep writing and claim our place beside men as equals in the literary world. Keeping a female name is a good start for that I think.