Dan brown isn’t particularly exciting. If you want a pen name, go for it, but it is a GIANT PAIN IN THE ASS. And YOU, my darling, CREATE presence 😉

Same here. There are lots who have the same name I do, including authors. Also, I’ve been told my name doesn’t have the “presence” of a writer.

I question them being actual experts. Most of the time, we are looking for authors under a surname first. And, as I said, search engines usually will correct typos and the unique spelling will work to her advantage. These days with facial recognition software? Going off the grid completely is about impossible unless you hire someone to scrub you from the Interwebs. If we wants to separate the ‘type’ of writing? Easy.

Say if I wanted to write on forensics. I would publish under K. R. Lamb. Everything else Kristen Lamb. I wouldn’t lose any of my algorithm power but would be able to distinguish in the reader’s mind that the works are different by using initials with one and a name with the other. I hope that helps.

Sorry for the delay in answering. Still been on the mend with my health.

Now, she’s really conflicted. She gets my arguments, but her field is academic. She’s a biologist with a PhD and wants to publish science books for a general audience. Like me, she has a very unique name (our last name is so unique, if you Google it, you find only our family). Her first name is Franciane. It looks and sounds like “Francine” but there’s an A in the middle! No one can remember that or say the name right. We keep going back and forth that this is actually a plus, that the name is very beautiful and it is actually memorable because it’s so different. On the other hand, the “marketing experts” around us are recommending that the name be short, easy to read and remember. So they say use just “Fran” since this is how we call her anyway. Her conflict is that in this field of science, some readers like to go check the writer’s reputation in places like Google Scholar and read their scientific papers. For that they need her real name. It looks like a no brainer. She could have a shortened version of her name on the cover and have details that reveal her full name with credentials inside the book, so people can look up her academic work if they want.

But she’s also worried about privacy. I guess I may have freaked her out with my stories of stalkers and people calling my relatives! In her area, there’s a lot of religious people who take issue with subjects like evolution and the origin of life. But it’s funny, the more I write about her case, the more I agree with you! LOL

I see strength in her unique name, not weakness. Maybe in her case, using her real full name (first and last) is actually the best option, especially from a marketing perspective (against the advice of our “expert” friends).

I get where the poster is coming from. I have a very unique name, there’s no one else in the world with the same name. I published my first books in the early 2000s when we didn’t think much of internet privacy. I used my real name. People would look up my last name on the yellow pages (remember those?!) and find my grandfather’s phone number. They would call him and tell him how much they loved my work and he would gladly give them my number (even after I begged him repeatedly not to!). These callers were mostly harmless fans that just wanted to connect, but I got a great deal of scammers, sales people, and stalkers. I had a guy that “fell in love” with me and lived in a nearby city. He managed to find out my home address and was a pain to deal with for several months. I write self-help so I tend to attract a lot of freebie hunters (I have this problem, how should I solve it?) and needy people that want to tell me their whole lives. I’m happy that they enjoy my writing, but I don’t do free consulting/coaching (a lot of people have a hard time understanding that) and I can’t be on the phone or answering emails for hours a day “connecting” or giving people the free help that they want. Of course, there are ways to proactively deal with this issue, but it’s better if people can’t just find my home address or phone number, or my relative’s info easily. In the mid-2000s I started using a shortened version of my first and middle name and had no problems ever since. I’m not hiding. I use my “pen name” even in my real life. I do not conflate social media accounts. I don’t have a profile for my real name and one for my pen name. I’m the pen name. That’s my identity. Although it may be possible for people to actually figure out my real name and get to me, this hasn’t happened in 15 years! I guess they’re too lazy to do the work, I don’t know…

In the poster’s example of the car accident, it would have been impossible for the other car owner to find out that Jane Doe (real name) has any connection to Jane Smith (pen name). You can find out what is the real name of a pen name, but when you have no reason to believe that a real person that you’ve stumble upon is a public figure, you wouldn’t even think of looking.

So while I do understand and agree with many of your arguments, I still feel like I have a layer of protection using a pen name. If someone is really invested in finding me, yes, they would find me, but it does filter out a lot of people who are just curious, want to be “BFFs”, have mental issues and just “want to talk”, want free coaching, want to offer me “business opportunities”, and so on. And in the case of problems in the real world like a car accident that would get people to Google your name, you’re completely shielded (unless there’s content published online that “outs” your pen name and hanks high enough for these people to find it).

Laura Engler is pretty too!

Do people call you Stephen or ‘Steve’? If they call you Steve you could use Steve King or Stevie King. But yeah, that is quite the existential dilemma!

Nobody can ever pronounce let alone spell my last name, ever. So I could use Jessica Salmonson? I hope you’re right. For now, I’ll just use robintvale when online so I don’t confuse other writers as I spent quite a bit of time switching it over to this pen name. Really. I confused the hell out of another writer who blogs when I switched so I don’t think I’d be a good idea to do it again, at least not so soon.