Why I Write As Katherine, Not K.D. or Keith

Did I make a mistake by publishing my debut mystery Lies Agreed Upon as a woman author? Book publishers claim studies show men don't read books by women -- so I've presumably lost a chunk of audience. I could have copied Joanne Rowling -- who obliged her publishers with J.K. Rowling so she wouldn't scare away the boys -- and published under the gender-neutral K.D. Sharma. Or I could have created a male false identity with a name like Keith Sherman. It seems very19th century, when the Bronte sisters wrote as the Bell brothers and Mary Anne Evans penned under George Eliot, but female authors do still don male names today. Maybe it's because they listen to the financially pinched publishing industry. A Wall Street Journal story last year quoted Penguin editor Anne Sowards: "It sometimes makes sense for a female author to use a pseudonym, particularly when the main characters are male, or when it's a genre with a strong appeal to men, like military science fiction, certain types of fantasy or gritty thrillers." She goes on to say, "For a new author, we want to avoid anything that might cause a reader to put a book down and decide, 'not for me.'" I pondered avoiding a bio photo and adopting a male pseudonym, but then it occurred to me: 1) Studies show that women make up the majority of readers of most fiction genres, and especially mystery fiction, and the female reading public is not biased by author gender; 2) I'm self-publishing, so I don't have to kowtow to the publishing industry; and 3) I'm self-promoting, including leveraging my social media networks, so it would be hard to get away with a false identity anyway. So I decided to focus on being an author, who also happens to be a woman. For the WSJ story, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324355904578159453918443978.html