With the onset of the new world of publishing, one of the things that has emerged is a whole new level of control authors have over their books that they perhaps did not previously. Covers, marketing and formatting are three, but one of the lesser discussed and more ambiguous areas is that of the author’s name, and whether writers should consider adopting a pen name.

I’ve expressed my thoughts on pen names in the past. Personally, I couldn’t understand why any writer would want to use a pen na...