In the comments on the previous post, Scott Parker says some things I think are worth a post of their own, along with my response:
Congrats on your first 30 years. You write the following: "Of course, one other thing that hasn’t changed is that, just like that Mike Shayne story, my name’s nowhere on the new books, either." I get the sense that your writing career is more important to you than name recognition. Not that your name is not well known but that you write more books under different names than folks who only write under their own names. Here's a question for you and any other writers out there: is that fact of modern publishing life--write lots of books in order to have a career as a fiction writer even though many of the books won't bear your name on the cover--the only true way to make a career as a writer (assuming a new writer is not the next Stephen King)? For me, from this side of the publishing world, I don't care if my name is on any cover. I just want the career. Sure, there's a part of me that wants to see my name on a book cover but if the price for a writing career is pen names, so be it. Thoughts?
You’re right about me. Being able to write for a living is more important to me than having my name on the cover. At one point in my career, I had published more than eighty books, only one of which (TEXAS WIND) had my name on it. People used to ask me how I could write a book knowing that my name wouldn’t be on it, and my stock answer was “I don’t care if my name is on the book as long as it’s on the check.”
Of course, that’s not exactly true now and wasn’t then. I’d love to be able to just write what I want, sell it, and have my name on it. But being able to keep writing, period, is more important to me. And I’d add that it’s not like I don’t enjoy the house-name books. I get a huge kick out of some of them, and I’ve never written a book that I didn’t enjoy writing, at least to a certain extent. (Some of them turned into nightmares later on due to editorial and publishing decisions I didn’t agree with, but writing the books themselves was okay.) I’m glad that it’s possible for diligent readers to find out which series books I’ve written and to get a little recognition that way, too. I really hope there are people out there who carry around a list of my books, including the ones under pseudonyms, and keep an eye out for them in the used bookstores, just like I’ve carried around such lists of other authors and series for many, many years. There are at least a couple of lists like that in my wallet right now.
There are dozens of books out there now with my name on them, and I’m thankful for each and every one of them. I hope there’ll be more in the future. But as long as I can keep writing, one way or the other, I’ll be okay. That’s just me. I don’t really think that’s the only way to carve out a career – I’m sure every author has a different approach – but I feel like I’ve played the cards that were dealt to me and won more than I’ve lost.
Update: Lee Goldberg chimes in on the subject over on his blog.
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11 comments:
Interesting post on pen-names...certainly a topic worthy of consideration!
Interesting post and I carry a long, long list. Too many westerns around that I haven't read. Same applies to Perry Mason and The Saint and, if I carried on,this would become another list.
On the subject of pen-names I used one to separate the writer me and the me that worked in the legal profession.
I write because I like the creation process. If someone buys a book or borrows it from the library and reads it then that's worth more than money to me.
I couldn't handle a career as a writer - not now. And, maybe, not back then either. I like to be able to choose when and what I write.
Good points, Ray. Every writer's approach is different, and so are their goals. A friend of mine once told me, "I'd rather dig ditches than write something I don't want to, something that isn't mine." I'm just the other way around. I'll write anything I have to in order to keep writing. (Besides, I'm too old to dig ditches.) But it seems to me that both stances are equally valid.
What I have is a notebook that I keep with me. I take the time to list all series I'm interested in, putting a dot after the titles as I find them and an asterisk to the left as I read them.
JAMES - I would say you are the most well known, unknown writer out there. How initially did you get into writing under house names?
Gary,
The first house-name I wrote under was Brett Halliday, when the editor of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, who'd been buying short stories from me under my own name, asked me to write one of the Shayne stories. Oddly enough, in the issue before my first Shayne was published, there was an ad for the next issue which said something like, "Coming next month, the new Mike Shayne sort novel Death in Xanadu by James M. Reasoner". Even though I'm sure it was just a mistake by whoever set up the ad, that's the only case I know of where a Mike Shayne novel or story was ever advertised as being by someone other than Brett Halliday.
My first novel under a house-name was the Stagecoach Station book PECOS. That was a case of me being hired by a book packaging company that used house-names on everything they produced, although that changed slightly in later years and I did three novels for them under my real name (the Judge Earl Stark books). All my other house-name work has come about through having contacts with the right editors.
James, it is nice to see someone who loves their work as much as you do. I think it shows in your books and that is part of what makes them so enjoyable.
Danny
Interesting topic. I'm one of those guys who carries around a list of your pseudonym books. I've started picking up a few here and there.
I don't carry a list of your books in my wallet because it's too long. I do take it with me whenever I go to a used bookstore and I've managed to acquire most of your Longarms. Do you have any idea of how many short stories you've written? Do you keep track of those as well? How about your Mike Shayne stories?
James's approach is one I much admire. When I began writing fiction back in the 1960s, almost immediately after leaving school, the work I did was mostly comic book scripts and juvenile text stories for UK publications. In those days, credits were not given and the copyright was purchased outright. No one made a fuss about it and it was what was expected, though friends outside the industry might sometimes ask whether you minded not being given a byline.
Just today I mentioned at Archavist's blog how I wrote a short story about a World War II Atlantic convoy, titled The Stragglers, which was published one year as the anonymous first item in the prestigious UK Eagle Annual. I don't think any reader would have been impressed to learn the yarn wasn't told by a distinguished war serviceman, but by someone who was little more than a kid! But I was a little peeved many years later, in New Zealand, when when I came across my piece re-used as the cover story for a Hamlyn anthology, Thrilling Stories for Boys. I was peeved not because it still had no byline, but because I'd had no further payment (I wasn't strictly entitled to any) and the book was, from memory, in its fourth printing.
As an aside, James says of his hundreds of mostly uncredited books, "Some of them turned into nightmares later on due to editorial and publishing decisions I didn’t agree with, but writing the books themselves was okay."
Lately, as publishers apparently become increasingly cautious about what they'll accept for public-library circulation, you can also experience this even if a book is to be put out under your own pen-name. That doesn't leave you completely happy.
Gonzalo,
I used to have a record of all my short stories, but it was lost in the fire. I know the last time I counted them, the total was more than a hundred. There were quite a few men's magazine stories under pseudonyms that have never seen the light of day since they were first published and likely never will. And I can never remember the total number of Mike Shayne stories I wrote, but it was somewhere between 35 and 40. I want to say 38, but that may not be right.
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