Here’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed recently: Writers are increasingly publishing in more than one genre without developing a pen name and related brand. Instead, they’re publishing all their works under the same name (usually their legally given one).
My go-to example is romance powerhouse Mazey Eddings. The deal for her upcoming gothic “horromance” (a hybrid of horror and romance) The Bargain made above-the-fold news in Publishers Lunch’s weekly edition on March 31. (Side note: If you aren’t subscribed to at least the free version of Pub Lunch and are an aspiring trade-published author, what are you even doing?)
Eddings shared the news to her Instagram account, saying, “This horromance has been living in the tender parts of my heart and the knots in my stomach for nearly two years. […] While the jump from romance to horror may seem startling to some, I’ve had a rage slowly growing in my gut for a long time—the inequalities of wealth, the wreckage of greed, the manipulation of vulnerable communities and individuals—but I haven’t known where to put it. I love the romance genre, but it felt so impossible to write a novel about love while ignoring this dark rage, and I didn’t know how or where those two profound emotions would meet.”
(By the way, none of this is being presented to question Eddings or her motives for switching genres. Especially not from a writer whose two published novels are romcoms, who is making the attempt to pivot to literary speculative fiction with horror elements. But given the way horror sales are surging, it’s hard not to see the influence of the market, at least on Eddings’s publisher’s or agent’s part in any decision-making process.)
Around the same time as Eddings’s deal news, we all learned that Freida McFadden, author of the wildly popular Housemaid series, is the pen name of a medical doctor called Sara Cohen. She had created the pen name to give herself anonymity and to keep her personal and public lives separate in a way that helped maintain her authority as a doctor, but now that she’s made beaucoup bucks on the franchise and its films, she’s lifted the veil.
A friend who used to work on the agency side of things posited that this industry shift (which, to be fair, I’m supporting with anecdotal evidence) is happening because, in our current age, the publisher has less influence and ownership over an author’s brand than the author does.
I tend to agree. So many debuts and breakouts come from crossover authors, who started as indie authors and then got trade book deals only after proving themselves time and again, on their own dime. I’ve seen many success stories, including Hatch Editorial clients like Kay Dew Shostak, who chose the indie publishing route after trade publishing proved not a good fit; there are also those like Hatch Editorial client Laura Morelli who begin in the indie space, then find success there and in trade publishing. There are clear benefits on the publisher’s side here—by which I mean waiting for an author to build their platform and prove a sales record takes the risk out of their investment and may even help reduce the need for in-house publicity—so shouldn’t there be some benefits on the author’s side, too? Because the author built that audience for themselves, if they’re savvy, they may have room for their desires (and their sales track record) at the negotiation table.
Ownership of Audience = Ownership of Name?
The primary reason an author in 2026 may not need a pen name to switch genres in the same way an author of yesteryear did is that genre boundaries are more porous now. From hybrid genres like romantasy (and now, horromance) to the fact that we now trust audiences to, hey, like more than one thing—looking at you, women who watch Hallmark Movies and have a favorite true crime podcast—audiences are no more likely than they ever were to read in multiple genres, but trade publishing is finally acknowledging it.
What’s more, it’s no fun to have to rebuild an audience from the ground up in a new genre, especially if that audience is loyal or there are tie-in elements between the genres. (See also the revelation of Robert Galbraith’s real name—only when “his” initial sales of The Cuckoo’s Calling tanked.) Audiences that are cultivated by indie authors on social media and in digital spaces like Book Bub are loyal and are therefore more likely to follow a beloved author into a new genre, even if it’s dipping a toe into something they’ve never tried before.
In Defense of the Pen Name
Some authors may still need or even want a pen name if they’re writing across genres, and that’s fine. Maybe you’re writing about something contentious or salacious, or maybe you want to protect your privacy. Or maybe you thought all authors wrote under pen names when you were a kid, and so you’ve always wanted to bust one out. (This is a self-dig; when I was seven years old, I was convinced I was going to someday write books under the nom de plume Anita Rosenthal.)
On the other hand, there are genres where subject matter is secondary. My dear friend Anna says that she writes literary fiction so that she can explore her special interests without adhering to a genre. (Her debut, a feminist vampire novel, is available now.)