These Male Authors Don’t Mind if You Think They’re Women

With psychological thrillers told from a female point of view a hot genre, male writers find an ambiguous pen name doesn’t hurt; trying on a bra.

Is Riley Sager, author of the new thriller “Final Girls,” a woman?The writer’s gender-neutral name won’t answer the question. Neither will the author biography on the book’s back flap, which avoids male or female pronouns, or the book-jacket photo, which is nonexistent. The website for the novelist features trees against a hot pink sky and the author’s Instagram account includes shots of books, desserts, animals and fruity cocktails.

While it isn’t exactly a secret that Riley Sager is the author Todd Ritter, it is fine with him if some people assume he’s female. In fact, it is good for business.

 .. The problem for men: Some fans doubt the authenticity of the female narrator’s voice when it is delivered by a male author.
.. The world has changed since the Brontë sisters and the woman born Mary Ann Evans, writing as George Eliot, had to disguise themselves with masculine-sounding pen names to be taken seriously. Women hold a large share of the power in the reading public. Last year, women bought 59% of all fiction, according to NPD Books.
.. A 2014 Goodreads survey of 20,000 male and 20,000 female participants on the site found that of the 50 books published that year that were most read by women, 46 were written by women.

.. The stakes are high for male writers not to make mistakes that female readers would catch. S.J. Watson—Steve Watson—tried on a bra in his office

.. The book refers to the undergarment at least seven times. If he had messed up a reference to bra mechanics, he said, his mother, one of his first readers, would have told him.

 .. If readers assume he’s a woman, Mr. Strong said, it signals to him that he wrote a believable female narrator. “At almost every event, someone will say, ‘Oh, I didn’t realize you weren’t a woman,’ and I’m always pleased.”

.. Mr. Thomas​ adopted the pen name on the advice of his all-female publishing team but he didn’t set up social-media accounts ​for it because he didn’t want to flesh out the fake identity. “We didn’t overtly lie,” he said. ​“It’s a cutthroat industry.”