Display Names - Personal or Informative?

Continuing on the previous post regarding display names, how many authors use pseudonyms, or ghost names, when writing novels? Melissa Breyer lists 8 famous authors that chose an alias (also called a pseudonym, a ghost name, nicknames, working names, or even a nom de plume). In fact, she mentions Benjamin Franklin in her list -- as MRS. Silence Dogwood, and gives an example of the spicy, saucy writing he was doing under that name. Several writers have used more than one alias which might explain why people who have many blogs can have a different display names for each.

A Writer's Digest blog, many reasons are given for an author to use another name: to reborn a career after a poor-selling book, to cross book genres without preconceived notions from the public about a new book, when shopping around for a new publisher without worrying about the legal hassles of already being under contract with another publisher OR as stated in another article, to avoid the gender game where men are given more credibility than women especially in the early 20th century.

There is a lot to think about when writing!

What's In a Name?