Kindle Forum banner
1 - 20 of 20 Posts

· Registered
Joined
·
210 Posts
Discussion Starter · #1 ·
My book is meant to be humorous and encouraging for busy moms.  Kind of like a positive uplifting read with stories from my life as a mom of 4 kids.  I had this catchy title that I was really excited about---"Cracking up".  Double meaning of losing my mind vs. laughing about it.  Then I found a similar book that is virtually the same theme and it's called "All cracked up"...and it's the same audience I'm marketing to. Sooo...now I have to come up with something else b/c I don't want it to be too close.  I'm mourning the loss of my title b/c I was really pleased with it.  I'm out of ideas.  Anyone have thoughts? I'm bummed. Thanks! :-\
 

· Registered
Joined
·
1,388 Posts
Coffeetx, you may not have to ditch your title. If the other title is fairly old or obscure, you can "brand" your book with your new one. And book titles can't be copyrighted.

I found that there were other books in the past with HUNTER as, or in, the title. But no other title captured the themes of the book so perfectly, so I went with it. I hope that my marketing efforts will "brand" it so successfully that when anyone looks it up or discusses it, this thriller will be the first thing that everyone finds or thinks of.
 

· Registered
Joined
·
157 Posts
I'd say that you shouldn't just discard your title because it seems too close.  Many books do share the same title.  Try to form an opinion as to how the other book came by its title.  Was it named by an author who, like you, thought that it really fit the book?  Or was it named by some commercial outfit that chose the name because it would sell?  If the original book was titled specifically to feed sales  I'd say anything that is legal is fair.

I'm not going to name names, but my opinion in this regard has been strongly influenced by a very well-known author.  I used to read his material, until I read one in which the 'catchy title' had absolutely nothing to do with the content of the novel.  I lost all respect for the author and want nothing to do with with him or anyone who publishes him.  I welcome anyone to use his title for a different book and thrive off his promotion.  (I'd love to disclose the name/title, but I'm not saying something good about the author, so this is pretty close to not saying anything at all.)
 

· Registered
Joined
·
4,430 Posts
There's a book out called Dracula in Love and another called Dracula, My Love -- both from the POV of Mina Harker, and pubbed within a month of one another. You should be okay.  ;)
 

· Registered
Joined
·
884 Posts
Most of mine have extremely unique titles, but "Test Pilot" has already been used in a few books as well as a movie.  The biggest problem I have is that it's so generic that it doesn't rise to the top search lists.

I think the best thing is to put the title that works for the book and if you love it, go with it. :)
 

· Registered
Joined
·
47 Posts
kcmay said:
You could add a "subtitle," such as

Cracking up: a tale of egg-citement
I was going to suggest the same thing. Use the same title, but create a subtitle to differentiate yourself from the other book.

I'm sure, in something like the weight loss category, the same book titles have been used over the years. In other words, it's not the worst thing to have your humor, mom-themed book have a used title.
 

· Registered
Joined
·
456 Posts
I'd use it anyway, many people told me not to use the title I came up with for my book because it was already taken, but I still thought it worked well. Expect to see Les Turner's "Harry Potter and the Deathy Hollows" in kindle ebook format soon!
 

· Registered
Joined
·
748 Posts
Hey, coffeetx, just sharing some sympathy with you here: similar thing happened to me last month. My title, which I'd been in love with for over two years, showed up in Publisher's Weekly as releasing in July in the same genre, similar sub-genre. I was soooooo sad. I chose to go with a different title to avoid confusion. 

In your case, the words are different. If it were me, I'd go for it with "Cracking Up" since it isn't identical. Good luck sorting it out! ;)
 

· Registered
Joined
·
660 Posts
It's not something you need to worry about really, I mean I didn't check into it myself when I released "Hell's Gate" but later found out after doing a search for my own book that there's several pages of the Hell's Gate title on Amazon. Even if I'd known, I would still have released it under that name because it fit the story perfectly. lol

Carl
 

· Registered
Joined
·
5,045 Posts
Book titles are duplicated all the time. I remember a while back, two contemporary romances entitled Simply Irresistible were released within a few years of each other. I used the title Isn't It Romantic? even though another small press author (the late, lamented Ronda Thompson) had used it a few years earlier. And recently, Kristan Higgins released a romance entitled All I Ever Wanted without even asking me if I minded. ;D
 

· Registered
Joined
·
2,830 Posts
If you like "Cracking Up" go with it. No reason to really change it if you like it. But if you still feel it's too close to another and it's a comedy maybe try:

"Cracking Up"

( or How I juggle 4 kids, 2 dogs & keep laughing )

Not those words but something humorous and funny and grabs the Mom's attention.
 

· Registered
Joined
·
3,752 Posts
I'd say keep it. Your title really fits the description of the book.

I went through the same thing. There's another BADWATER out there, also a mystery/suspense, but it's not recent. Also, since my book is set in Death Valley (where Badwater is the lowest elevation in the country), I claim justification!

Good luck.
 

· Registered
Joined
·
140 Posts
If you really do have a problem with your title being so close to another one, then by all means find another title.

If your concern was that you can't use one taken, then I want to echo what the people above said: you can't copyright titles.

I had this issue come up last month when I finally decided to start publishing two of my books on Kindle.  Although one of the titles wasn't taken when I started writing the book, when I finished the first draft, or even when I'd finished writing the fifth draft, somebody managed to snag the title recently.  I almost changed my title, for the same reason you mentioned.  I've ultimately decided that I'm keeping it.  It's too integral to my book for me to change it now.
 
1 - 20 of 20 Posts
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top
https://www.kboards.com/threads/my-book-title-is-taken-suggestions.71409/
www.kboards.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-49
231313
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:ZZ4H74FJUPZUVRRJLUAYZPRWAPY5YQFU
<urn:uuid:a56d1efa-9389-4361-8f02-37a4f4f24d34>
2022-12-09T21:53:00Z
104.16.173.102
text/html
sha1:MHOKVFIEXK757MMDRZULLZO754HFGQG4
<urn:uuid:8f7f5510-a751-4636-a1f7-016c3f10aad6>
https://www.kboards.com/threads/my-book-title-is-taken-suggestions.71409/
response
<urn:uuid:4dff170f-9bbc-4400-ac13-0858e11600d3>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-49
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for November/December 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-150
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/