Should new writers use pen names or pseudonyms?
Here is a piece by Robert Brewer of Writers Digest on the question, early 2020.
People like pen names if they need to remain anonymous and keep their identities secret, a scenario I do not like personally but which the industry, and particularly marginalized groups or writers in authoritarian countries may need.
My legal name is John William Boushka and my parents gave me the nickname 'Bill' when I was born in 1943, based on the contraction of the English middle name.
I used it as a pen name for the 'do ask do tell' books.
However, I think if one is going to tell a nonfiction personal narrative and argue some social or political positions in a less popular way (let’s say, non-identarian) and possibly not expect huge sales (in self-publishing) and deploy a lot of online content, as I have, I think, in retrospect, it is better not to do this, but to write under your legal name.
In today’s political climate a plethora of names and potential trademarks or wordmarks or domain or account names may be less favored in the tech industry than it used to be. For example, if one uses Wordpress on more than one post, it would be possible for Wordpress (which collects all the blog names onto one site) to object to excessive or deceptive naming practices. You could run into an issue with name hoarding.
Heidi Thorne discusses the issue of multiple pseudonyms for different genres as separate businesses (which may be OK if they all have separate revenue streams). But my nickname is not really a separate persona, as she explains it; it is a contraction of my middle name common in English families (mother’s side).
Project Life Mastery discusses the issue for Kindle.