The Purpose of Pen Names Essay Example

Imagine you are a new writer, and you decide to release your first book and you put the book under your real name. The readers of that book disliked it. They started to criticize and attack the idea of the book. The criticism got popular rapidly and you got well known for that book. When you decided to write a new book no one even thought about reading it because people assumed that it would be as substandard as the previous book. On account of this writers prefer to use pen names instead of their real names when publishing a book. Pen names are widely considered to be extremely important for writers. Authors use pen names because of fear of criticism, fear of sexism, to publish more work than usual, or even because they want to start their career all over again. 

Criticism is everywhere however it becomes quite serious when it could ruin a whole career. Many writers may use pen names to disguise their true identity for their day jobs, not wanting their bosses or colleagues to know that they write a particular genre and be subject to scrutiny or embarrassment. According to source 1 paragraph 1 “Eric Blair, author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, adopted the name George Orwell because he feared his early work would embarrass his family”. Consider if Eric Blair would have used his real name and his book was criticized, it would have been unsettling for his family and the people around them. People could have started avoiding them and even talked behind their backs. Besides, most jobs would not want someone that has an unpleasant history to work for their company. Referring to source 1 paragraph 1 “C. S. Lewis, concerned about his status as a professor at Oxford, used the name Clive Hamilton to publish a collection of poems”. C. S. Lewis was afraid he might lose his job as a professor if he published a collection of poems. As an illustration if people didn’t like his poems it would have been hard for C. S. Lewis to keep his job. His school might not want him anymore because some parents could be disturbed by the fact that their kid’s professor has released a collection of poems that people disliked. 

In addition, women mostly use pen names to avoid sexism and for people to take their work seriously. Some people don’t read books that are written by female authors because they think that it will be a waste of their time but that’s not accurate. A case in point according to source 1 paragraph 5 “As with J. K. Rowling, Hinton’s publisher thought it would be a good idea to use a pen name; if readers associated the narrator of the story with a male author, it would make the story seem more believable”. A book depends on the idea and how well it was written not who wrote the book. The book was successful, and it was a female that wrote it. An analogy of sexism, some cultures from the past “discouraged women from having literary aspirations.” (source 2 paragraph 6). Thus, women started using pen names to publish without prejudice in male-dominated circles, to experiment with the freedom of anonymity, and to encourage male readership. Many female writers still have their identity hidden under male names so they could keep publishing books and using their knowledge.

Furthermore, writers tend to use pen names because they want to publish twice the number of books they can publish in a year. By publishing more books, they could make more money and they could share more of their talent. For instance, Richard Bachman was a writer that used two names. He used King and Bachman, “Writing as both King and Bachman, he could produce twice as much work.” (source 4 paragraph 12). Moreover, he used a pen name to test if his success was because of his writing or was it just luck. According to source 4 paragraph 13 “Although King claims that he still does not have an answer to that question” it was worth the try. Plenty of other writers choose a pen name to inspect and examine their success or even test which genre people are most interested in. If a writer’s work doesn’t seem to attract many people, they will use a pen name to try writing about a different genre. As an example, “…Rowling became so famous that she later turned to another pen name, Robert Galbraith, to write detective novels.” (source 1 paragraph 4). Not every writer does it because their work isn’t getting much attention, some use a pen name because if their coworkers or manager heard that they are writing about a particular book genre they might lose their job. As an illustration, It may be unsettling for some to find out their surgeon is a prolific writer of murder-thriller novels.

To sum up, writers use pen names to write about genres they are not comfortable sharing that they write about because of embarrassment or possibly losing their job. Also, to avoid criticism and sexism. As well as to publish more books than usual and sometimes they want to examine if their success was because of their skills or was it luck. You never know, you could be reading a book with an author using a pen name. I encourage you to go out there and spread your knowledge about why authors use pen names instead of their real names. In addition, try researching an author that you like, you are likely to find out that they have used a pen name at least once.