Writing science fiction; novel sales problem, part three -- publishing under another name
There are very good reasons for publishing books under a pseudonym instead of your own name. If you're a person who despises the limelight and craves privacy, for example, you wouldn't want to publish under your own name. If you're working desperately to establish a reputation as a high-powered scholar in some rarefied discipline and want to keep your genre fiction name entirely separate from your scholarly name. If you're writing in a field that's tightly linked to another gender -- like a man who writes Evangelical Christian romance novels. If you want to establish two writer personas -- maybe one as a writer of medical thrillers, and another as a writer of "literary" novels -- and keep them entirely separate. If you're so prolific a writer that there's no way you could find space in the market for all the books you're willing and able to write each year. Those are all excellent reasons for writing under another name.

The situation I'm in is different. It goes like this. The sf editor says to me: "I've read your book proposal and your sample chapters, and I love it all. Great idea; beautifully written; award-winning potential. We'd be delighted to publish this book. However, you'll have to let us do it under another name, because of the low sales numbers on your Native Tongue books."

This is a publishing system which says explicitly that quality is irrelevant. "If your previous novel was one of the worst books ever written, but it sold a million copies, we'll buy your new book," it says. "If your new book is one of the best books ever written, but your last one sold only ten thousand copies, we won't buy it." It says "We'll be happy to publish your book, but we're not willing to admit that we're associated with you." It's like someone who's willing to sleep with you but isn't willing to appear with you in public. When I participate in a system like that and go along with it, I'm endorsing it; I'm supporting it and helping it become more firmly established. I'm actively supporting a system that calls all its writers except the superstars "content providers." (And the sniggery label you hear in bars -- "typists with a bad attitude.") I'm making it even more likely that the same thing will happen to other writers. And I'm doing nothing whatsoever to improve the quality of published science fiction, nothing to improve its image, nothing to get rid of the stereotype that made my university -- when I was being considered for tenure and promotion -- refuse to let any of my science fiction qualify as a "publication." How can I do that?

Then there's the fact that writers today have to put vast amounts of time and energy into building their name into a "brand" if they want their books to stay in print more than three weeks. Most of us would much rather be writing instead of doing promotional stuff, but we don't have that luxury. Publishing under a different name means starting that process over -- from scratch. Suppose our sales figures skyrocket; then the publisher who had no respect for our name will do a swift reversal to take advantage of the "brand" work we've done -- they'll put "by Tracy Brown, writing as Hepzibah Courtwhistle" on the book covers. Feh. Aargh. Damnation. This world once more, and then there'll be fireworks.

And then there's the idea that my writer's "voice" is a sort of generic commodity .... that unless the book says "by Suzette Haden Elgin" on it nobody will be able to tell that I wrote it. I find that really insulting.

This is a radical speaking, you perceive, someone concerned about quality and principles and not participating in something contemptible just because there's money in it. It has cost my family a great deal to indulge my principles. It's not the way the game is played.

Suzette

PS: I am absolutely not suggesting that other writers should follow my pigheaded Ozark example. Everybody has to make their decisions based on their own circumstances and obligations.