title-ing a book with the same title of another book (derp :p)

by Tiago Silva
18th May 2014

OK finally finished the title!

So I have a questio, well I'm writing a book, and the title of my book is the same of another's book which had a lot of success.

so my question is is the title really important even if it is almost the same title as the book that had a load of success because the story is not really the same and obviously if it was I would probably get sued or something like that so... answers please :)

(I now realize that I said 'title' many times. Oops) :p

Replies

Thank you Paul for the top.

And Mark, it is really annoying when that happens.

I had to change my title a bunch of times because when I searched the title it was always being already used. And then I thought on a perfect title, used it and one year later, BA BÉM, a book with almost the same title as mine and now it has a bunch of success!

Well thank you anyway

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Tiago
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Tiago Silva
18/05/2014

As long as you don't drop Harry Potter into the title I'm guessing it would be fine!

I had a similar issue with one of the characters in my children's manuscript, when halfway through the second draft the name of the character came up in the news as someone who had recently committed an awful crime. Now I always google my main character names to make sure they are not named after someone infamous.

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Mark J
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Mark J Braybrook
18/05/2014

Hi Tiago. I think that it is up to you. I changed my title from "TIME AFTER TIME" to a different title. A writer published her book recently with that title and I felt it too close to her publication to leave mine because I am hoping to submit in the next few months. However, had it been in print for a few years I would have used it as it is already a film title about HG Wells time machine. For me it is the closeness off the publication and not the fact that there's another with the same name, it will happen all the time same with songs. Any publisher who thinks it is not the thing to do will insist that you change it so really it will be out of your hands.

Regards Paul

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Paul Garside
18/05/2014