Dual-ing Pen Names

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Many authors write under a pen name, including me. But how many write under multiple pen names? I think the number might be larger than many of us suspect and because of the push to brand yourself, it seems to be growing.

Most authors have been told you need to brand yourself with a specific platform or genre/sub-genre of romance in order to gain and maintain more readership. This move, in addition to other reasons (such as jobs, disparity of genres, or too much name recognition) has led to many authors maintaining two or more writing identities. And recently I’ve been among the numbers considering it.

A big reason on the pro side of having more than one pen name is a separation of the author’s identity by genre/subgenre. Jenna Jaxon is mostly considered a writer of historical romance. This is the way I’ve decided to brand myself and have been writing historicals exclusively since 2012.

Before that, however, I did publish three contemporary erotic novellas which are still in circulation and still have my name on them. (I had one person last week remark, “I didn’t know you wrote contemporaries!”) I like the stories a lot and have sequels to all of them in mind, however, they are not my primary interest at the moment and in the past few months, as two of them have contracts ready to expire, I’ve been toying with the idea of getting my rights back, changing the covers and self-publishing them under a different pen name. I’d put “Writing as Jenna Jaxon” in smaller letters, so hopefully those who have bought them won’t buy them again. But then any sequels or additional contemporaries would have the new pen name listed.

I’ve contemplated this change before and the biggest stumbling block to the change is the work it would entail to maintain two separate identities—especially in promotion and maintaining of blogs. I’m thinking more seriously about the move, however, as the contemporary pen name would be sort of my “side line,” with less promotion until I decided to write additional titles in that sub-genre.

Do any of you have more than one pen name? Do you have advice for me on this rather momentous career decision? Thanks for sharing!

Filed under: Craft, Jenna Jaxon