I have used a pen name for every book I’ve published. Kinda.

So I start each week saying, “Hi I’m M.K. Williams.” and this is not my legal name. As you may have guessed. My parents did not just name me with letters. But ironically, this name is more my real name than my actual legal name since everyone knows me as M.K. When I started self-publishing as M.K. Williams I had several friends comment if it was to seem more gender anonymous. I was publishing science ficiton, and even though Mary Shelley wrote the very first sci-fi book ever the amount of comments I get from men about “i didn’t know women could write that stuff” is astounding. So yes,a little bit of picking my nickname as my pen name was that level of anonymity and I would hopefully still have men willing to read my books instead of using my legal name. 

Also, my legal name is BASIC! And GENERIC. So lots of other authors already use those names.

I was happy to keep writing under M.K. Williams forever. I bucked the advice to have a different pen name for my non-fiction brand, Author Your Ambition. It would confuse the algorithm. It did. But I was writing books about how to self-publish. I didn’t want people to look up the author name on those guides and only see how-to self-publish guides. Like, here are the books I have where I learned these things. 

So all of this is to say, that if you want to write under a pen name. That is normal. It is allowed. And in some genres it is expected. Many romance authors do not use their real names. Many female authors of all genres don’t use their real names. It’s common.

I am finally listening to the experts, and I am setting up another pen name. As Mary Kate Williams. Which gets closer to my legal name, but not all the way. 

Why am i setting up a pen name, and why should you if you already have books out?:

1. I mentioned that I really should have done this before to appease the algorithm. While I hate this idea, it is legit. When Amazon, or other online retailers, see sales for one of your books in one genre, they recommend it to people who like other books in that genre. So then this reader finds you, yay! Then they go to read other books in your catalog that aren’t for them. Yes, there are examples of author who buck this trend. They are the exception to the rule. I wish I had listened to this advice earlier. Hence, I’m doing this now.
2. I am adding on traditional publishing to my catalog. I have a dozen self-published books. When I started to write what would before Heifer in 2020 and 2021 I thought about the audience and where to reach them. Those readers pick traditionally published books. So that meant i needed an agent. Since this genre was slightly different, and a new strategy, I decided it wastime for a new pen name. My agent agreed with this strategy too. So that’s a win. 

So, if you have a pen name you will need to do a few things:

1. First check that name isn’t already in use. When I self-published under M.K. Williams, no one was publishing under that name. Another author started using a few years later. But that’s also their initials so what are you going to do. But if this is truly a new name do a check. Any other author using that name that has a big audience will own that name on any searches. Or maybe you were both with the name Stephen King or Taylor Swift and you want to have your own author identity. 
2. Have a social media presence for that pen name. If you want to keep your personal or professional life separate from your books, you need a totally separate account, otherwise when your book takes off, people will see the personal account and riddle out your legal name. 
3. If self-publishing, use the pen name when assigning your ISBN and uploading your book. But use your legal name on all the tax and bank information. 
4. If traditional publishing, let the agent know in your query letter your legal name (because contracts) and the pen name you are writing under. 
5. Claim your author profiles. I’ll have separate videos on this so be sure to subscribe.

What other pen name questions do you have? Let me know below! 

Follow my pen names:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/M.K.-Williams/author/B06XK438L5?ccs_id=032c1ce7-baf0-4bf9-8e38-7d145efd6270 or https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mary-Kate-Williams/author/B0DQQNWRTB?ccs_id=11c90bee-2676-4164-b2e6-f40eb906eb8d

Goodreds: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14420756.M_K_Williams

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1mkwilliams