People of the Book � Authors in Disguise

Some authors are writing under new names to evade bad sales figures from earlier books, according to a recent news article discussed at People of the Book.

I don't know how to tell the reporter this, but this is nothing new. Writing under various names, either to keep your different types or styles separate in the minds of consumers, or to give yourself a clean slate, goes waaay back. Trust me on this.

OK, what is new is that now there are new ways of tracking actual sales, or at least actual sales tracked by Bookscan, and so a writer might have to change names in situations where in the past he might have slid through unscathed on a bluff.