Bisky's Twitterling's Scribbles! discussion

My story is called "The Scarlet Ribbon" and I've done Google searches in the past and just searched on Goodreads for the title. There are two different novels with the same title.

Does anybody know what laws there are pertaining to titles? I understand song lyrics, movie footage, and book text are copyright-protected, but are titles protected?

TWO? You're fine. Book titles aren't (generally) protected. I challenge you to google "Forbidden Love" or "Love Always" as book titles. I bet there are 48329483928.

That's what I figured, but I wanted to ask anyway. xD

You should see the crap that comes up when you google The Watchers lol I dont think it matters as long as its not something like Harry Potter :p

Good point. :3

There are also song titles that have the same name, so the same should apply to books. :3

Interestingly, the only book with the same title as my first novel (MISSING TIME) was a "documentary" about UFO abductions. So I figured it's fair game for a fiction novel. There was one other fiction title called "Once Upon a Missing Time" which I thought was rather clever, but not the same as mine so no problem. I published in February 2013. Come to find out, two months later, the writers of "Once Upon a Missing Time" published a screenplay version of their book, just called MISSING TIME. Now that irked me. They had to have seen mine when they did it and published it anyway! I've half a mind to publish a screenplay version of mine and call it ONCE UPON A MISSING TIME just to f*** with em.

hahahaha J! YES you should!

I agree with G.G., you should do that, J. But make sure 'Once Upon' fits the story. :3 Maybe they wondered if someone was using that title, too, and Google-ed it.

There are several books titled HEALER'S TOUCH. The other fiction titles are all very romance/erotica-themed... not that mine doesn't have a heavy dose of romance in it. But it has made me wary of continuing the "Touch" theme for the rest of my titles. When a friend suggested "Healer's Touch" for mine, all I could think of was the irony - because my character also damages/kills with a touch... But I can see how people would see the word "touch" and assume touchy-feely... And so, I remain timid, but with a lack of other ideas for the rest of the series.

I think as long as your title isn't "Twilight" or "The Hunger Games" or anything along the lines of really, really famous books you'll be okay ;)

well... I didn't do quite enough research before I titled my first book The Rock Star and once I published it I was stuck in the middle of hundreds of bad romances with names like:
The Rock Star (RocknRomance Series)
The Rock Star's Daughter
The Rock Star and the Girl from the Coffee Shop 1 and 2
Rock Star (Groupie)
Rock Star (An Eva Heart, Vampire Slayer Novel)
Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazy Sensual Rock Star Romance...with Humor)
and so many more that I can't list them all. So if I had it to do all over again I would really re-think the title of my first book...

My first book is called Obsession. Try that on Amazon. You will come up with some pretty interesting books.

On the flip aide, I have a free write that took on a mind if its own that I orginally called Angels and Demons. I have since then renames it for obvious reasons.

The Battle for Brisingamen isn't so common, although Brisingamen is.
The Glade however is a different story - if you'll pardon the pun :P There are loads of books with that title, but I don't see it as a problem particularly, especially as I'm not aware of a really famous one of the same name. I don't worry too much when choosing a title, I just go with what feels right at the time.
@ Rick and @ Heidi - lol ...

I shall stick with my title then! :3

I guess I see it as authors having different interpretations behind their titles. I didn't know there were any books with the same title until after I had a hunch and did a google search.

I searched for my title before settling on it, and I only found one non-fiction book with Virtual Wars in the title. It's nice to have something unique to build a brand around, but at the same time it's not something people are going to search for by title unless they already know about it. Just like everything else there are advantages and disadvantages.

There is a comic book called Dance With Fury I just searched it ^-^

My next title will probably have lots of other books with the same name.

For my 1st book "Moment of Truth" there were a lot of search results, but i wanted it that way. Reason for choosing that Title are:
- All poems are kinda dark and the last one, called "moment of Truth" is happy happy happy kind of poem
- I have been writing for several years before I have published this book and I fell that that moment was my moment of truth

Second Title was chosen according to the same named song "Carnival of Rust" by Finish group Poets of the Fall. And finally last title is "Moonchild's Smile" where i am a Moonchild who is smiling. *lol* For 2nd and 3rd i haven't found any matching Titles, nor I will find for any upcoming book cause I have some strange syntax constructions particular to my style of writing.

When I was looking at titles for mine I had a good search around to check there wasn't anything with the same title. I did have to change the title of the second book ('Christmas By Misadventure', as it eventually became) because I found something with the same title that I was originally going to use on Amazon ('From Christmas to Eternity', which is already a 'Mills&Boon Medical' novel, and I dread to think what exactly that might mean!), but ended up with a title I prefer, and that I think fitted the book better, anyway.

It wasn't a matter of copyright or anything, just that I'd prefer my titles to be unique. Of course, someone else might come along later and use the same title, and there's nothing I can do about it, but for the moment they seem, as far as I can tell, to be unique.

Having said that, someone else might reasonably end up using 'Christmas By Misadventure' as a title in future, but if anyone randomly comes up with another book called 'Martifius: The Wizard of the Eastwood' I would be fairly surprised!

I think comic books are ok but i dunno how id feel with lots of novels with my title :p

I would prefer a unique / "exclusive?" title, too. :/

Maybe we'll all have to swap articles in our titles or add a "his" or "her." :3 lol "Her Dance with Fury" or "A Scarlet Ribbon" or "The Christmas to Eternity." I don't know.

Haha i think most titles inspire other works anyway so nothing stays exclusive for long :p

True. True. xD How about titles that originate with us? We can all be title trend-setters? :3

Lots of titles of people dancing with stuff? :p

I'm dancing with myself-elf... lala lala lala

(Do I need to mention who sings that?) ;)

Yes... :p

The Scarlet Bowling Ball

I was filmed dancing with myself for a video once in high school. o.O xD

I picked "Fallen Redemption" for my title, and when I first searched for it (back in January 2013), no books had it. So then when I decided to self-pub, just out of curiosity, I did a search and found someone had self-published a book of that title in July 2013.

I WAS SO MAD.

I don't know if I should have been mad. I probably shouldn't have. But it was just so ... I don't know. I was super offended.

But, my developmental editor and I talked it through, and she didn't recommend that as a book title anyway. That's how we ended up with Guarding Angel, and two other books have that name anyway. The way to differentiate it, she said, was to have the series title. So we went with "Fallen Redemption" for the series title.

I don't like not being unique, but then again, I think we all just want to be unique snowflakes. I guess we just have to suck it up that we're not. Haha.

I kind of understand that being offended feeling because there are at least 2 other Scarlet Ribbon novels out there.

Even though are titles may not be unique, at least our stories are! :3

The Girl Dancing in the Scarlet Redemption Club at Twilight

You know, I've always been annoyed at the Twilight book titles because it's a good title but has nothing to do with the books themselves. So now the word "Twilight" is off-limits pretty much, even though it would be much more descriptive of another book.

I think it's also why I got so mad about "Fallen Redemption" being used by someone else. It's a vampire novel about some race of creatures called "the Fallen." But I'M SORRY, "FALLEN" DENOTES FALLEN ANGELS. Not vampires. *steams*

OK, I'm not really mad anymore, but I was at the time.

Hilarious. I grew up in NW WA and went to Forks regularly. I picked my title All Is Silence knowing that there is a translation of the Spanish Language Book Todo Es Silencio. Don't expect that a lot of people looking for that book will be disappointed with mine. If I get a Spanish Language edition, I'll title it "Silencio En El Mundo" probably.

Jennifer wrote: "I read that Myers originally named Twilight, Forks, after the town in the book. Ugh! Can you imagine?! ;-)"

I like my titles to have lots of secret meanings :]