Pen name(s) when building two very different brands

[Sanderling]

(I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this, or the social media forums, but I've noticed other pen name topics posted here.)

I have a nature field guide under a prominent label coming out next year. My real name will be on this book. I hope to, eventually, write and publish further nature-themed books under this name. If you google my name, in addition to everything about the field guide you'll find lots of stuff about nature and birds (I'm a freelance biologist). My real name is entirely tied up with this nature persona.

I am also writing YA fantasy fiction. It would be hard to pick a genre that was farther from science/nature writing. I am close to querying for my current WIP and hope that it will eventually be published, and Lady Fortune willing I hope to make a career of these, too.

So I am wondering: how important is it to make a distinction between genres in your published works and online personas through use of a pen name? My real name (Seabrooke Leckie) is extremely distinct, so it would be pretty obvious that the YA author and the nature author are the same person if I used it for both. Does this matter?

Or would it be more appropriate to choose a different name to build my fiction persona around to make it easier for my readers to separate my different brands? For instance, on Facebook, since it's unlikely my nature fans really care all that much about how many words I wrote today for NaNo, and my fiction fans probably don't care that I just found a cool moth at my porch light, I'd maintain two profiles. Would it be enough to just append the genre to the end of my name on the Facebook page (eg. "Seabrooke Leckie (naturalist)" and "Seabrooke Leckie (YA author)") or should I use a pen name for the latter to make it easy and obvious? What about for Amazon listings - can I assume people are smart enough to figure out which genre each of my books are if I'm using the same name, since the genres are so distinct?

I'm not worried about anonymity, I don't really care if my YA readers know I also write nature or vice versa. But I do want to take the approach that's going to make it easiest for my fans (at such time that I have some for fiction; I already have a large following for nature) to find and follow my individual brands. But also without giving myself unnecessary headaches. (I'm not sure which would cause more headaches: trying to keep straight two different names, or trying to keep straight two different personas under the same name.)

From the point of view of a reader, what would you want an author to do?

I checked out this thread on genre hopping and this one on pen names, but they didn't really answer my question.
Thanks!

[Margo]

A lot of that would depend on how different the two genres are in terms of violent and sexual content. An example would be Seanan McGuire doing adult urban fantasy (with a certain amount of sex and violence) under her own name and her YA zombie books as Mira Grant. A YA author who also does very steamy erotic romance should absolutely think about using a pen name for one, to avoid alienating the dedicated audience that loves his/her work so much that they'll purchase anything with the author's name on it. Does that really happen? Do people really purchase book or ebooks without checking out the blurb or the sample? YES, more often than you'd guess.

The other time someone would want to consider keeping their genres separate with a pen name is when they are writing in genres whose readers don't take the other genre seriously. This happens, for instance, in science fiction and in literary fiction, both of which have a core group of readers who turn their noses up at certain other genres. A sciece fiction writer who also puts out romance under her name may find that her science fiction audience no longer takes her seriously. I have often wondered how seriously the epic fantasy audience would have taken Jim Butcher if the urban fantasy had come after the epic fantasy, and I have witnessed hardcore epic fantasy fans blowing off Butcher for writing urban fantasy.

[Doug Pardee]

Speaking as a reader: yes, go with a pen name. No need to hide it — "Nora Roberts writing as J D Robb" on the cover doesn't raise any eyebrows.

The author's name is oftentimes the brand, and it sure sounds like that's the case here.

[Sommer Leigh]

I'm going to agree with Margo. Since there's probably not much controversy brewing between your two genres, maybe it wouldn't be such an issue.

However, as a reader, while I don't care if authors I love write under pen names, I do get frustrated when I'm trying to find information about an author and getting that information is not easy. So, for example, let's say I'm a HUGE fan of your nature books. I google you and I get some website hits for nature books, but also this blog/website about your YA Fantasy. What if I want to follow what you are doing, would that mean I'd have to follow your YA Fantasy blog if you don't also have a nature blog? And if you have two websites, one for your nature stuff and one for your YA Fantasy stuff, will both have the same general information or will I find out new stuff about you if I check the other site? Will I feel resentful if you are putting out a new YA Fantasy novel this year but I have to wait two years for your next nature book? Will I find it hard to distinguish websites and social media about you?

Will you put the same amount of attention into both areas on the web so that both groups of fans get up to date on what you're doing? If you plan to have a social media presence for your YA Fantasy, will your nature fans be put off by having to find you amongst the teenage masses?

On the flip side, there are authors I follow who also have a pen name and it is clear that one of the names gets more attention than the other, so if I want up to date information, I have to google both names. Very frustrating. I can kind of feel that one of the names is more promotional while the other is for interaction. And this bothers me because the author name I like spends her blog time selling at me, while the other name plays on Twitter and has an interesting blog.

So I think my answer is, it depends on how you want to handle your online persona(s) and what you want other people to think when they google you. You don't want to make the experience hard for your reader or unpleasent in any way.

[Sanderling]

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone. So it sounds like readers would prefer a pen name so long as both identities are maintained equally?

Margo: I think that anyone reading my nature books would (hopefully) not be offended by anything in my YA books, though I think the number of people with overlapping interest would be smallish. But I might be more concerned about what one group thinks of the other. I suspect YA readers would think the nature stuff was geeky, and the the nature readers would take the YA writing less seriously. But I don't think there would be the same sort of disdain as between literary and SF/F fiction, for example.

Doug: Nora Roberts/JD Robb and also Ruth Rendall/Barbara Vine were two prominent names that came to mind when thinking about the topic. A favourite historical fiction author of mine, Susanna Kearsley, also used to write mystery under Emma Cole, but has recently re-released those books under her own name. I think it's common enough, even being up-front about it, that no one would be surprised.

Sommer: I do intend to try to put as much effort into each of my online personas, and would keep both up-to-date as best I can with pertinent information. I currently have a blog for each, but only one Facebook/Twitter/etc, and those are mostly only used for nature stuff. If I sold my fiction I'd develop separate accounts for my fiction brand. There'd obviously be different stuff on each pages, but with a broad middle overlap. I wouldn't bother posting to my nature blog about my new YA book coming out, for instance, but I'd include intended tours/appearances on both and apply a footnote indicating what the speaking topic was. And if a nature fan wants to brave the YA hordes for a YA book launch to talk to me about nature, I'm all for that. As for rate of production, nature (/non-fiction) books take longer to write and produce in general than fiction so there wouldn't be much I could do about differences in release rates if I end up being successful with the fiction as well and have new books coming out annually... though I might be getting ahead of myself here.