Should You Use One Pen Name for All Your Erotica?

Your mileage is going to vary. I made the decision - so far - to have all my Loose Id erotic romance pubbed under the M. C. Hana name. It's what the agent, publisher, and I hammered out, and it's a major part of both my contract and my reason for involving an agent.

Everything else in the SFF and erotic romance genres, no matter the publisher, will be published under the Crane Hana name. My readers are going to have to get used to it from the start, with the promise that I'll have adequate keywords. So far, the readers who really like my stuff, like the range and variety. If they don't, they don't have to buy my work, and they're welcome to leave whiny one-star reviews about boy cooties and girl cooties.

That may change if a Big Five publisher convinces me an advance and sales are worth name dilution. But it would have to be a dump truck full of money.

Generalbrock said:

On the one hand, if I keep them under one name, then that's just one mailing list, one website and one Facebook fan page etc. But I don't think people interested in romance erotica, would be all that happy with M/m or something similar.

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Actually, a sizable percentage of M/M erotica writers and readers are women. Who I would assume also consume romance erotica. But I understand that's only being used as an example.

If you wanted to write both erotica and non-erotica, that would be a separate animal all together. But this is just within erotica. You certainly can go the separate names route. Others have. But I think that you'd do yourself a disservice by creating a pen name for every different varied work. Once fans find out you write good, they are going to want to read what you write. It's your writing style, it's the quality of your writing, it's your characters, it's just that you produce good stuff. That's why someone would come back to You - an expectation of quality. So by you using a separate name, those fans won't be able to find You - you're starting all over again at 0.

Yes, not every fan is going to like every kink or orientation or subgenre of erotica you write. But neither is every fan going to like every Story you write, either. There are authors I follow that sometimes write stories or books with subjects, genres, etc that don't interest me. I just skip that content and wait for the next thing that I like.

The concern is that someone is going to assume that your name = stories about x. They automatically read what you write because it's you, and since they don't like x, they'll get upset. Well, yeah, that can happen. The best way to reduce the chances of that is being up front about the contents of a story. Put tags on the book that is clearly M/M erotica. Say in the blurb, "This is M/M erotica." Then the only people who get upset are those that don't pay any attention to anything. And if you're worried about upsetting readers/pushing people away, that is an inevitable thing. You can't please everyone all the time.

Not only is it more stuff you have to juggle, but you're also considering radio silence. Let's say you have 3 separate names, one for M/M, one for normal romance, and one for BDSM. If you write a story for each one, then people following you for say, M/M are going to be waiting 2/3rds times as long just to hear back from you, to hear what you're upto, to see that you're active and putting out new content. Even if you're not putting out content that the M/M crowd is interested in, they will see you're not dead.

I'm with Rechan to a degree. There are some instances though where I think separating names if you only plan to do Erotica is worth the risk though, and other times where I think it's just molly coddling the reader. I said this in another thread, but when I read something by a writer I pay attention to the blurb, cover and other things. If I don't like the story then I skip it. That's my responsibility, because no one is forcing me to read the things I read.

That said, if some of your stories are vanilla and others very heavy kinks. In that case I would suggest separate names, because there will be crossover. But that crossover wont be huge, and having both side by side could put people off a lot. If you do only MM and FF, separate names are fine too. But say you do Vannilla, and very very heavy BDSM for both. In that case I wouldn't do it, because essentially, despite kink level it is still an MM or FF Erotic story. A separate name for every genre or kink can be horribly unwieldy and unpleasant to work with as a writer.

This is a question I've been pondering for the last couple days. I write mainly erotica (not that any of it is widely available yet), but I've been working lately on a totally non-sexual in any way YA story about a cat, so... I feel like I want all of that available, but definitely under widely removed from each other pen names. But that's a little off topic

As for my erotica, I find I write whatever is interesting that week, so I have a stack of stuff with wildly varying subject and theme. I think, after much wondering and reading up on what others have done, I'm going to go ahead and keep one pen name for my erotica stuff. I think Rechan's last point is what I'm thinking about most. I am really into rough, D/s f/f stuff right now, and I can see me writing a lot of that in the future, but I also really like the dynamics in 3somes/groups (including dudes &c&c), so I know I'll be going back to that eventually. Is there crossover in my readership for that? You betcha. I'm a reader and I know I like both, so it seems highly suspicious to me that I'd be the only one ever. I'm special, but I'm not that special.

I think it's boiling down to, at least for me, if I like writing A, B, and C, there's gonna be at least some readers who will want to read (and buy) A, B, and C from the same place. Like being able to buy windshield washer fluid, milk, AND gasoline from the same service station. Convenience!

Also keeping multiple names straight seems overly complicated to me. I can barely make it through a day at work at Pays The Bills Job without picking up the phone with my online handle (or heaven forbid, my sexy pen name). But that's probably my laziness talking.

While I appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of each approach, I think one name can maximize the benefits of crossover readership without causing problems. You can avoid confusing or misleading readers by creating clear categories on your web sites. I've seen plenty of writers do that. The genres or sub-genres get their own pages and links from a main page. Your effort would be in creating separate landing pages for each so readers who find your name can be sent in the right direction(s).

This is assuming it's all erotica or erotic romance of some sort. However, if one type of writing is so extreme that it would taint the others, two names could be better. You didn't say anything that suggested there would be that level of conflict.