In his new book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot (Knopf), professor Richard Wiseman examines the science of self-help, presenting a series of fast-acting techniques on how to improve your life. In one part of the book, he examines the impact of people's names on their career choice, success and happiness. In this item written exclusively for Shelf Awareness, he has turned the scientific spotlight on how budding thriller writers can quickly choose a pen name that will help guarantee a place on the bestseller list.
In the Douglas Adams novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, the success of fictitious bestselling thriller writer Howard Bell was attributed to his name fitting the "short surname and slightly longer first name" formula that apparently makes for the maximally visual book cover. It is a fun idea, but is there really anything to the theory? And, if so, what is the perfect pen name for a thriller writer? To find out, I counted the number of letters in the first and second names of more than 100 well-known writers.
A pattern quickly emerged. Many of the bestselling thriller writers are likely to adhere to a "three-letter first name and slightly longer surname" rule, among them Dan Brown, Ian Rankin, Sam Bourne, Ian Fleming and Lee Child. So is it as simple as that? No. There also appears to be a second effect at work.
Linguists classify vowels according to where in the mouth they are pronounced. Some are produced at the front of the mouth, such as the i in bit, whilst other are produced towards the back, such as the o sound in home. Names can also be classified in the same way, with front vowel names including Craig and Ben, and back sounding names such as John and George. Research conducted at MIT found that names with front vowels are seen as more attractive and masculine sounding than those with back vowels. Interestingly, a disproportionate number of bestselling thriller writers have names with front stressed vowels, including Lee Child, Dick Francis and Iain Banks, suggesting that buyers may be attracted to them, in part, because they subconsciously perceive these authors' masculine sounding-names to be in keeping with the genre.
The implication is clear. If you want to create the perfect pen name for a thriller writer, think of the "three-letter-first-name, five-letter-last-name" rule and a front stressed vowel. Howard Bell need not apply.
