My first published book (The Felix Activity Book) came out in 1996 (8/27/96, to be precise; anniversary greetings still being accepted). It was a trade book, meaning it was sold in bookstores. (Perhaps it’s more accurate to say it was put in bookstores.)
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Then over the next five years, I wrote about 35 more books…for the school and library market, also called the institutional market.
Institutional books are commonly published as a series and different titles in that series are commonly written by different people; each book in any given series must adhere to guidelines the publisher established specifically for it. Series I wrote for include We the People (American history), Endangered! (threatened animals), Atomic! (high interest topics from gladiators to vampires), and Countries of the World (countries of the world).
In between, I also continued to write trade books including What’s the Difference?, How to Do a Belly Flop!, and Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman. (Hey, at least one of those three titles does not end with a punctuation mark.)
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When writing for the institutional market, some authors use a pseudonym. One explanation I’ve read: they reserve their real name for when they write a “real” book.
Put another way, writing for an institutional series usually precludes creative experimentation. To cover the basics for a wide audience, these books take a straightforward approach. An author of an institutional book most likely didn’t choose the subject from the ether; a publisher probably asked him if he would write on that particular topic. Sometimes editors say they want an institutional book to be written stylishly; while great in principle, it’s frequently difficult in practice because such books have inflexible parameters (i.e. fixed word count and limited vocabulary, and despite that, a relatively vast amount of information to be conveyed).
Some authors withhold their name from a work-for-hire book because the book doesn’t reflect the author’s voice. I understand this. But I didn’t do it. My name is on nearly all of my books. Just because a book can’t be written with personal flair doesn’t mean anybody can write it.
9/12/13 addendum: Message from an educator whose school hired me to speak:
I had no idea how many of your “bread and butter” books we had—gladiators, Green Berets, endangered tigers, Pledge of Allegiance—the list goes on and on! It lead to a great discussion with some of the older kids about things you do for passion vs. things you do to eat!
In part 2: why I used my real name on all but one of my books
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