In each case they chose to disguise their name because the perceived audience for their books was male. Young males in this case, but males nevertheless.
I followed up the author interviews with an interview with Jenny Fanelli who was the senior editor for Juvenile fiction at Random House for most of the seventies, eighties and nineties. She confirmed this for me. In her words, "most publishers are convinced middle-grade and teen boys will not buy a book from a female author."
If you look, you'll find a few who use their full name, but in most cases their names will either be pseudonyms or they will use their initials.
A few examples:
Gayle Lynds who is an established writer in the thriller genre, wrote for years under G.H. Stone while writing books for primary male teen audiences. Gayle even signs her juveniles using her pen name.
Katherine Applegate is well known in teen fiction, but her teen-girl themed books are under her full name, the teen-boy themed books are under her intials.
The most most obvious example is one I'm sure you've already figured out. Sadly I have never had the pleasure of speaking with her. It's J.K Rowling. Before she was the world's most popular writer, she fell under the same rules as many of her peers. Of course now she is famous and could use whatever she wanted, but back in the beginning she had no choice.
Tom
1 comment:
To extend your comments about juvenile fiction: The truism in juvenile fiction has long been that girls will read "boy" books, but boys won't read "girl" books. That is to say, girls will read Animorphs, but the boys won't read across the sub-genre lines. The American origins of this division date back to the nineteenth century with the rise of the girl and boy books. *Tom Sawyer* is the classic example of a boy book, while *Little Women* is the classic example of a girl book.
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