: Re: Is it a bad idea to have a pen name with only an initial for a surname? My name is Ana Novkovic and I'm about to start writing and all that. I really really don't like my last name Novkovic.

@Lengel543

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You can publish under any name you choose. Whether it makes a difference to your sales is a very open question, but if it makes you feel better about publishing your work, then by all means use a pen name. Many great writers have done so -- Mark Twain was a pen name; so was Andre Norton. More recently, John Varley was a pen name -- and these are just the ones I know, whose work I've read (and I'm a pretty narrow reader).

On the other hand, people with harder names than yours have published under their birth names -- Somtow Sucharitkul, for instance (though after several years, he changed to using S.P. Somtow). Aleksandr Solzhenytsin was another.

I'd suggest you don't worry about whether your readers can pronounce your name, and concentrate on writing work they'll want to read. If they want to read it, they'll get past your name.

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