Quote:
Originally Posted by jackm8
She was immediately opposed to it, but she was just overruled by her American publishers.
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I also read she's not J.K. Rowling, but Joanne Rowling (no K) and that was Bloomsbury's idea, despite loads of successful 20th C. authors using obviously female first names and read by boys (Enid Blyton). And others even in USA read by adult men (Anne McCaffery, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ursula K. Le Guin)
Publishers are weird. Poor Carolyn Janice Cherry persuaded to be C. J. Cherryh (Though unlike Rowling's 'K' she really has an initial J) and Alice Mary Norton was Andre Norton, Andrew North and Allen Weston (but I don't if that was her idea or not).
It's true that often men writing Romance/Chiclit or similar use female pen names.
What a tangled web
I was in a mad S/H goods shop (Charity shop) and the new manager decided to sort all the books by, um, perceived sex of the author based on cover name (separate shelving). That lasted nearly 3 months and all the staff thought it mad.
Of course some famous writers are entirely made up pen names: Leslie Charteris (he & daughter give different origin stories), Cordwainer Smith and John Le Carré (he was actually still a spy when he published 3rd novel, 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold '; Ian Fleming was a desk jockey and his bother Peter, a reporter, may have been a spy. Peter is a better writer too!).