I'm currently psyching myself up to start sending my novel out to agents. I read somewhere that you should always use your own name in correspondance rather than any pseudonym you write under. I don't write under a pseudonym, but the first name I use is a non-obvious abbreviation. Should I sign with my full first name rather than the name I use?

Cas

Use whatever name you want to be called by--it's not something to worry about. I use my real name for writing, posting, everything. Saves complications. But I know of others who won't even tell anyone what they are really called, and just use their pseudonym. The only complication that can then arise is when cashing cheques, but it's a problem I'd like to have to deal with!

I would think this was a problem you need to deal with only when you are signing any contract. Good luck!

Does it not also arise as a problem when dealing with copyright issues?!? I always thought that IF anyone was kind/gullible/silly/bored/smart enough to publish anything of mine that I could open up a company under my pseudonym but having worked in a bank I know its not that simple anymore (ever since 9/11 they get a bit funny about accounts with fictional names - I can't imagine why)

Jane, I admire you for sticking with your birth/marriage name, I'm also a Smith and it for that reason that I went for my great grandmothers maiden name. The strange thing is my first name is uni-sex and I have had people assume I was female before... (strangely it helped to get me a job that I think I would otherwise not have been considered for!)

Sorry Cas, we're straying from the point a bit maybe??

Cas,

I'd say submit under the name you wish to be published under; use your proper name for cntracts, bank details, etc.

surely not if sending to an agent etc? copyright is still copyright. send a synopsis to yourself don't open it and shove under a mattress. date and name is all the proof that is apparenty needed.

Names are more protectable (ible?) than books, and there's an advantage to being one of several with the same name.

Years ago I was foolish enough to live with a Canadian writer whose name I will not reveal here (I am a woman of mystery). He wrote under his real name: poetry, myth, that sort of thing. There were two other writers that he knew of with the same name, one of whom wrote books about DIY and woodworking, while the other wrote naval (not navel, as I typed the first time) histories. The people who sorted out the public lending rights resulting from library borrowings had no idea that there were three writers called by the same name: they just assumed that my writer-friend was immensely wide-ranging in his writing habits, and sent him the money for all three of them. The scheme, as I remember it, was structured so that if your total earnings under it came to below a certain figure, you didn't get anything at all. Each of these three writers would have come in just under that breakthrough amount, so if he had fessed up, none of them would have got anything. So he just kept quiet and cashed the cheques. Naughty boy.

All of which goes to show that you can worrry yourself silly about names and still get caught in a web of intrigue. Call yourself what you want. It really doesn't matter. Look what it did for Englebert Humperdinck.

Cas, be optimistic. Sign the covering letter whichever way you prefer. On the front of your submission include a cover sheet with, in big bold letters, the title and the name you write under. In the top right hand corner put your name and address – your name, in this case, being the one on the bank account you want your royalties paid into.

Good luck,

Dee

Thanks everyone, that was helpful. I think I'm at the wibbling stage here, looking for excuses. *sigh*.

Cas