The Writing Workshop

Get Published!: Why would you want a Pseudonym?

The pseudonym, also known as a pen name, is one of literature's oldest traditions. The pseudonym is a fake name that an author takes on to publish under.

It is commonly suggested that the most typical form of literary pseudonym is that of female oppression: female writers write under male (or gender neutral) names to get their books published.

All 3 Bronte sisters used pseudonyms with a stroke of amazing solidarity: they all took male names but used the same last name of Bell. The novelist George Eliot (of Middlemarch fame) was born Mary Anne Evans. But women aren't the only ones to choose a pen name for themselves when being published. Mark Twain (the great American author who wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

I personally think he should have been S. Langhorne just because it sounds cool.

And authors aren't the only ones to take pseudonyms. The majority of our celebrities do not use their real names or alter them slightly, for purposes of name recognition and branding. Actors, especially, must choose unique names, because their union, SAG, only allows 1 person of any name to be a member. In other words, if your name is Diane Keaton, you're out of luck.

In publishing today, pseudonyms are still a major factor. I know back in my MPW days, we discussed (usually in full-on daydreaming mode) what name we would write under. And did you know that JK Rowling is actually Jo Rowling, and the K is not part of her actual name at all? Rowling used the initials after her editor (or publisher, don't remember which) believed little boys wouldn't want to read something written by a woman. (Because Jo is so feminine, anyways.)

And the New York Times recently published a piece on the story of Patricia O'Brien, whose most recent novel, Harriet and Isabella, didn't do so well. After several rejections, including from her own publisher, O'Brien submitted the work under a pseudonym and the book was sold pretty much immediately. Whoops.

In this day and age, a name is branding. If you search just my first and last names, you'll find a whole bunch of people who aren't me - I have the most common last name in America after all. But if you search my full name, Drew Patrick Smith, then this website and my twitter account are on top. I have branded myself by making myself unique, so that my name holds some recogition value - at least to Google, anyways.

Pseudonyms can do the same thing - or they can help you to create a new branding if the old one isn't working out. The goal, though, is pick a name somebody else isn't using, no matter the field. You want your name to be the first thing that pops in Google.

Cause despite Beyonce's protests about girls, it's Google that runs the world.

Publishing News Snapshots: E-Publishing Galore: New Bronte Story Online, Franzen vs. Twitter, and Marvel Comics Creates new Infinitive Digital Comics

As shown repeatedly in the past ten years, digital publishing and new, nontraditional publishing ventures are becoming more and more the norm.

Even old school, literary publishers are getting into the mix, like this brand new Charlotte Bronte story, which has been published by the London Review of Books. Called L'Ingratitude, the story was just recently discovered and is believed to be Bronte's French homework.

Kindle Singles, Amazon's e-publishing platform that produces shorter works by popular writers that wouldn't be able to be published in traditional book form, has now sold over 2 million books since it launched just over a year ago. The reviews are mostly that it's great for the authors, since they can write novella and short story length works and actually have them be published. Customers like it because the prices are usually cheaper than other e-books by big name authors.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom and The Corrections, has stuck his foot in his mouth again, this time by revealing just how much he hates Twitter. Roxane Gay delivered a wonderful smackdown of his arguments over at HTMLGiant (which was then re-published by Salon), wherein she basically tells the rather austere author that you don't have to like it, but don't hate on something that other people do, since you haven't even tried it.

The Brooklyn Public Library has purchased an Espresso Book Machine, which allows users to create print on demand books at the library itself (from PDF files and the like). I think this is great, but there's a little part of me that wonders about copyright infringement issues, but in general, how great is it to create a book in little over seven minutes?

And lastly, we have Marvel Comics, publisher of superheroes Spider-Man, the X-Men, and the upcoming Avengers, who has announced Infinite Comics, a digital-only publishing initiative. In the past, digital-only books have been events or preludes to big event comics, but the Infinite series will lead with Nova (pictured above), a formerly in-print book, and will be written by comic book veteran Mark Waid and drawn by stellar artist Stuart Immonen. I think this is great, mostly because the cost of paper has drive the price of comic books way up in the past five years. And using wonderful and experienced talent? An excellent move, Marvel.

Publishing News Snapshots: Pottermore Launches in April, US Gov versus Agency Pricing, and a Bevy of Award Announcements

JK Rowling's online wonderland for Harry Potter fans, the pun-rifically named Pottermore, will open for the public in April. Pottermore has been open for betatesters (think of it as a public trial, while bugs are still being fixed) for some time now. On the site, you'll be sorted into Houses and learn new Rowling-approved tidbits from the Harry Potter world. You'll also be able to buy e-book versions of Harry Potter, which are not currently available anywhere but will soon be available for school and library use.

According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, the United States government will sue Apple and five of the six major publishers for colluding to artificially raise the price of e-books. The pricing scheme in question is called in publishing terms "agency pricing" which the publisher sets the price and Apple takes a 30% cut. Agency pricing is seen as going against the rules of supply and demand, but also preventing a monopoly (basically, for Amazon). It will be interesting to see how this shakes out - a ruling that the agency pricing scheme is illegal could drastically alter the publishing landscape in this country, as e-books continue to take up more market share each year.

There were also a whole boatful of literary price announcements this week. The longlist for the Orange prize for fiction, a UK-based prize open to all women novelists, was announced, and included the pictured above There But For The: A Novel by Ali Smith (I wonder if we're related?). Notable for me among the list is how many of them are debut authors - a rarity among literary prizes. Last year, Tea Obreht became the youngest Orange prize winner for The Tiger's Wife.

Speaking of debut books, Barnes and Noble's Discover Great New Writers awards were announced in New York City this week.  Scott O'Conner, a graphic designer from Los Angeles, won for his novel Untouchable, while Michael Levy won for his memoir Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion. Besides the cash prize, both books will receive the very nice promotiom in Barnes and Noble stores and in their online shop. On top of that, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award was given out also this week. This award is also for debut writers, and the prize went to Teju Cole, for his novel Open City.

Anybody read any of these? There's too many to pick from!

JK Rowling to Publish a Mystery Novel for Adults, World Faints in Anticipation

JK Rowling, the world's first billionaire author and beloved creator of the world-wide phenomenon Harry Potter, has just signed her first new book deal.

Rowling has signed with new publisher Little, Brown (her previous American publisher was Scholastic, which does not do adult books) and will be edited by David Shelley, currently Little, Brown's publisher. The move is a bit surprising, since publishers don't normally edit. (They're too busy with the bigger picture stuff.) But hell, this is JK Rowling. Why not?

The choice of Shelley, being well-known for a career editing bestselling adult mysteries, basically also gives us the type of novel Rowling will be writing, a complete breakaway from what made her the world's most well-known author. (Well, maybe next to Stephen King. That one is up in the air.)

And I say, Good for her!

Authors, thanks to the branding nature of book producing these days, are often type-cast into a certain type of book. But authors often write more than one type of book (one of the reasons why authors use pseudonyms if writing in a different book genre than normal). If Rowling can break this mold, especially if she does so successfully (both on a financial scale and on a critical scale), perhaps publishers will realize that pigeon-holing their talent is never a good idea.

I mean, look at what happened when somebody let Heath Ledger play the Joker. Nobody thought it would work and he turned in one of the most amazing performances I have ever seen. Similar thing there in my mind.

Also, CNN ponders another interesting financial sidenote: the publishing industry needs to produce more "event" books or books that can drive customers into bookstores. This idea intrigues me, as we all know that Borders is now dead and that independent and niche bookstores across the country are closing every month. If more books appear that simply create interest in the wider world, as in the mainstream media, then perhaps people would pay more attention to books in general.

Part of the thing there is that people forget that books aren't like other forms of entertainment like TV shows or movies, wherein they come and go rather quickly. Books often sit for months in a bookstore before being bought and sometimes, a title suddenly become very popular, months after its first appearance. This happens with much frequency than in other forms of entertainments - movies rarely return to theatres and TV shows are cancelled. As such, while event books sounds like a nice idea to drive bookstore foot traffic (the pillar of any in-store retail money-making, really), I'm not sure it could ever work.

The mainstream media pays more attention to Rowling for the fact she's basically a celebrity than the fact she writes books. And Harry Potter became a social buzzword after the movies started coming out. Getting the media to pay attention to the written word is like asking for them to pay attention to new academic studies that aren't "neat" or "buzz-worthy" but are still insanely smart: it just ain't gonna happen. Sad but true.

Also, just announced this morning (more mainstream coverage for Rowling): the Harry Potter series will be released in ebook format for school and library use, from an collaboration between Rowling's Pottermore and Overdrive. The Harry Potter series was originally supposed to only be available digitally from the Pottermore website.

Publishing News Snapshots: Inherited Comic Collection Worth Millions, Nebula Awards Announced, and RL Stine Publishes a New Story via Twitter

Here's some publishing news mini-bites for you!

RL Stine is the beloved children's horror author, most recognized for his Goosebumps series. (I fondly remember reading The Haunted Mask in elementary school and promptly having nightmares when I fell asleep during library free reading.) He has just published a brand new story, line-by-line, through his Twitter account. The story has been collected by io9 and can be read at the link. I think it's great that established authors are getting into new technologies. And good for Stine for having fun with his work. Sometimes authors forget that we do this because we love it.

Speaking of loving it, the 2011 Nebula Award nominees were announced this week. The Nebula Awards are considered one of the top prizes for fantasy and science fiction writing. The awards offer prizes in terms of length: novel, novella, novelette, and short story. (Frankly, the word "novelette" sounds so made-up it's not even funny.) There is also a prize for screenwriting, which pits children's movie Hugo against both Captain America: The First Avenger and a Neil Gaiman-written episode of Doctor Who. Love it!

And finally, we have the story of one Michael Rorrer, whose great aunt promised him his great uncle's comic book collection when she died. Little did Rorrer (or his aunt, I'm assuming) know that the collection was worth nearly 2 million dollars, thanks to some very rare golden age issues. Most important to the collection's value are those first appearances of DC icons Batman (Detective Comics #27) and Superman (Action Comics #1). Interestingly, it is believed that the value of these issues would be much lower if so many golden age comic books weren't destroyed when anti-comic book fever hit America in the 50's, thanks to pumped up Congressional hearings (think of the similar hearings about bad music in the 80's). You can read about them in David Hadju's wonderful The Ten-Cent Plague.

Get Published!: But At What Cost?, or PublishAmerica is Evil

While self-publishing may be a more worthwhile endeavor these days, more and more shady publishers seem to be popping up.

Vanity publisher PublishAmerica has recently started a program wherein they "send" one of their workers to JK Rowling's home and drop off a box of promotional material for some of their books. And then they charge their authors $49 for this service by claiming that they put the books right into Rowling's hands.

Rowling's lawyers have issued a cease and desist letter, to which PublishAmerica responded with this rather hilarious letter - one in which the "lawyer" involved uses triple exclamation points (he apparently never took my composition class).

The whole point is that  you need to know who you're working with. You wouldn't take a job from a company that's not going to pay you what it said it was going to pay you, so why would you take a contract from a book publisher who's likely to cheat you? In other words, before you send your manuscript anywhere, you MUST research them (and I don't use all caps lightly).

For instance, if you go and google PublishAmerica, you will quickly find things like "PublishAmerica Scam" and "True Stories about PublishAmerica" on the front page of Google. If there's just one bad account, ok, fine, the author has a gripe. If there's several, all of the same type, then you've got a bad publisher.

Legally speaking, PublishAmerica might not have broken any laws yet. So, they're still in business. They can even advertise right here on my page (I've seen them but I haven't figured out how to stop them and now that I wrote a story about them, they'll probably show up more. I'm sorry.) Please don't use them.

If you truly can't get a deal with a good publisher, then self-publish. Don't use a vanity press. There's simply no reason to in this day and age. Lulu, iUniverse, and Createspace are all great programs for people who simply want to be in print. Amazon's Kindle Direct program is awesome for e-books. There are ways - just please don't waste your time and money with a program like PublishAmerica. It ain't worth it.

Fantasy Author Bits: Preview from Vampire Academy's Richelle Mead, Amanda Hocking's New Book Covers, & Sneak Peak at Pottermore

It's a female fantasy author free-for-all! (Go alliteration, go!)

First up, we have USA Today's brand new look at fantasy self-publishing queen Amanda Hocking's mass market book covers. For reference, that's one of Hocking's self-published books to the right. Apparently, the designer decided to keep the strangely bright colored branding that all her books had in the translation to paperback. (If you don't remember Hocking's deal, here's my recap.)

The only big question I have is: since Hocking's e-books were so cheap, are people really going to buy paperback versions of books they probably already read or is St. Martin's Press hoping to ease the time between actual new, original stories from Hocking with these reprints for new readers who don't yet have e-readers? I'm not sure it's the best marketing plan ever, and might diminish Hocking's street cred with the self-publishing world. (Word.)

Over in more happy news, we've got the first screenshots from Entertainment Weekly for Pottermore, JK Rowling's new Harry Potter website extravaganza. I've also got more information over here about Pottermore, and I've heard many people say that they got their beta-testing passes (they were available by contest), so I'm sure that when the beta site opens up, we'll be hearing a lot more about whether people like it or not. (I'm personally still excited.)

In also fun news, Entertainment Weekly has the first several chapters and book trailer for Bloodlines, the newest book from Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy spin-off. I've got to say, Twilight stuff has totally overrun the Young Adult world. But I've read some of Mead's stuff, and I kinda actually like it, so at least there's better vampire young adult options out there. And who doesn't love vampires crossed with boarding schools?

Literary Throwdowns of the Week: Margaret Atwood vs. Toronto Politicians & William J. Mann vs. Knopf

Authors are known to have strong opinions - it's probably one of the reasons why they write, the need to get their ideas off their chests and out into the world. So it's only normal when authors pick a fight with somebody.

Last week, venerable Canadian author Margaret Atwood (The Year of the Flood, The Handmaid's Tale) picked a fight with a city councillor of Toronto whose known mostly for being the mayor of Toronto's brother (they're apparently not well-liked there). The councillor is in favor of stripping founding to the city libraries. When Atwood defended the library system as being vital, a reporter asked the councillor for a comment.

He responded by saying that he didn't know who Atwood was. Apparently, he needs said library.

Atwood, not one for letting sleeping dogs lie, tweeted that the councillor was "ignorant", and one of the largest Canadian bookchains, Indigo, offered a 30% discount on Atwood's books so that the councillor could read up. If you follow Atwood on Twitter, you'll see that she's made several more comments since then, both about the need for libraries and the lack of need for uncultured politicians.

In our next battle royale, author and historian William J. Mann (he most recently published his biography of Elizabeth Taylor, How to Be a Movie Star, but I read and thoroughly enjoyed his novel The Men from the Boys) and his editor George Hodgman battle author James Curtis and the publishing giant Knopf.

The issue is apparently that Curtis's new book, a biography of actor Spencer Tracy, probably more well-known today for being involved with Katharine Hepburn, tries to discredit Mann's well-researched (and critically well-received) biography of Hepburn (Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn), which detailed Tracy's bisexuality. When hearing of Curtis's book, Mann offered to share his sources, an offer Curtis never replied to. Curtis was, allegedly, bankrolled by the Tracy family.

Hodgman, in an open letter written to Knopf, makes an excellent point that Knopf shouldn't be publishing shoddy research and putting it up there as history. While trade publishing has no peer review process (wherein scholars check each other's work, as in the academic publishing world), there still needs to be substantial proof for something to be published, which Mann's book had, in the terms of recorded, verifiable interviews with several people who knew Tracy and Hepburn personally.

Frankly, though, this isn't really surprising. Publishers want to make money. A book that sounds sensational or controversial might sell. Although, frankly, Spencer Tracy isn't really enough of an icon to pull in buyers or even media attention, especially for a white-washed biography. My guess? Somebody knows somebody at Knopf and wants to discredit Mann and other books who detail the stars' sexuality.

PR machines are apparently still working for stars who are gone.