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Topic : Re: Author changing name Let us suppose an unmarried female author. She publishes something. Then she gets married, and chooses to change her surname to her husband's. Obviously, she can choose not - selfpublishingguru.com

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The German author Lucie Flebbe did that: born as Lucie Ringe, she married and became Lucie Klassen, published her first novel under that name, divorced, married again, and published more books as Lucie Flebbe. Those 9 books feature the same persons and are generally considerered as one series.

So yes, it is possible, but I'd say it causes more confusion than it's worth. Personally, I started with book 4 of the series, was quite disappointed that book 1 seemed to be out of print, and it took me years to realize that it actually wasn't.

Her (German) homepage lists the whole series, but the fact the first book used the old name is quite invisible - you can't see it anywhere except on the book cover image, see here: www.lucieflebbe.de/lila-ziegler-romane/.
I asssume that, after a divorce, the incentive of not having the former husband's name on your books, is quite bigger than it just being about your maiden name; but as a reader, I just don't care about the name, or the personal life, of an author. If I like a book, I want to read more from the same person, and I'll use the name to find more; making it harder for me to find your books generally means I'll spend less on them and you'll earn less.

So don't change the name you use to publish your books; your readers won't care about your marriage and name change, but they will care if they can or can't find your books.

The exception being, as mentioned in some other answers, when you're starting to write something "totally different" and don't want to alienate your previous audience by throwing something at them they probably won't appreciate.


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