Using a Pen Name and how?

Elaine Deyo" <[email protected]> wrote: 
Do any of our list members us a Pen Name? How do you place it on your 
book, and are you the publisher of the book? How does this work for you?
Best to all,
___________________________________________________

I use a pen name, because, a)I wish to keep my professional and personal lives apart, b) I hold a responsible government job in which I serve the public, c) certain fans do not, unfortunately, respect an author's privacy, and d) because I don't wish to broadcast my personal information in any manner shape or form over the Internet, especially nowadays.

As far as my contracts are concerned, I use my real name and include my pen name as my business identy. Early on, before my first commercial sale, I self published three of my titles via XLibris for advertising purposes. Although I've never made my money back from XLibris and don't expect to, the resulting exposure did attract the attention of my first  publisher and I've never looked since. 

I have never subsidized any of my titles with any commercial publisher with whom I have had a contract since 1998 and sll services, including art work and editing, have been routinely provided. (However, I provided my own cover art which was given to me gratis by a family member who is a well paid professional with a major Fortune 500 corporation.

Someone else was discussing advances. According to my understanding, one of the main reasons for the author advance is the time frame. Unlike electronic publishing, several years can elapse between the the contract signing and print publication. The advance is against future royalties and a reserve is withheld by the publisher from the advance against future returns. In other words, the print published author does pay for returns. Since very few midlist titles ever earn out their advances, more often than not, this is the only money the author ever sees. 

Piers Anthony has an excellent chapter about this very subject in his excellent autobiography How Precious Was That While, and the erswhile literary agent turned epublisher Richard Curtis has an absolutely scathing short story on his site at Fictionwise about the fiscal lunacy of US commercial print publishing called Render My Statement, Tender My Check. Both Mr Anthony's comments and Mr Curtis's short story should, IMHO should be required reading for anyone even *considering* becoming involved in this crazy business in the first place.

Commercial electonic publishers don't generally pay advances because the economic exigeancies are entirely different. For one thing, there is no such animal as a "reserve against returns" in an ebook author's contract because there is thing as a "return". (The whole business of "returns" came about in the first place as the result of Congress's legislating it as a WWII wartime measure and it's still with us today.) Compared to print publishing, the time lapse between the sale and publication is comparatively short, although the reputable established ebook publishers state that they are all experiencing backlogs and some are closed to new submissions.  

Ebook authors get a straight royalty deal with no muss, fuss or folderol and this is precisely what Mr Curtis recommends that print publishers should do in his short story. Piers Anthony, OTOH, licenses his titles to his publisher. This means that, instead of having a standard royalty contract, he and the publisher share profits and expenses and he says the difference to him financially has been like night and day.

In the meantime, horror stories continue abound about the atrocious treatment meted out to midlist print authors by their New York publishers since the entertainment conglomerates started buying out the great old names. Seasoned editors were let go in droves during the initial buyouts and the whole thing finally became such a nightmare the Authors Guild filed a formal complaint to the Federal Trade Commission charging the publishers ss a group with collusion, criminal conspiracy and restraint of trade because of their contract terms. 

I hope this helps      

--
Freddie aka Kate Saundby
[email protected]
http://www.double-dragon-
ebooks.com/
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/aut
hor.asp?AuthorID=1745
http://www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/K
ateSaundbyeBooks.htm


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