Cogent Dream
Whoa choosing a name so you can be beside another book! THAT'S CRAZY FORETHOUGHT.
But yeah, I'm just surprised Stephen King felt as if his name was hurting his chances so I wondered if there was a bit of bias after all. What if you had an Asian last name or something? I think that might hit your credibility a little. If you think about it, most writers in a genre tend to have names that fall into a specific ethnicity.
I think that publishers and agents usually decide whether an author should publish under an alteration of their name or a different name altogether. I have an online alias, but a pen name? That's not a decision I'm even going to try to make.
Choosing a name to sit next to someone else on the library shelf? Foresight, yeah, but it's also a kind of surrender: by making that choice, you're admitting that you're
trying to crib off their success, and that you think you'll never be good enough to stand on your own.
REACH FOR THE STARS, PEOPLE, NOT THE CEILING LAMP.
And as for ethnicity/race, I was seriously surprised to find that a guy with an unpronounceable name like "China MiƩville" (is it, like, China the country, or, like, Chee-na?) was some white dude born in Norwich, England. Who names their kid China? Can't say it influenced my opinion of his work or my decision to read it, though.