This is just one of the many lessons it has taken me a long time to learn. To wit – to check that the title that I propose for my latest book has not already been used.
Technically it doesn't matter if it has. A book title, unlike a trademark, Coca-Cola or Nike say, cannot be copyrighted. Would however be a risk to even include Coca-Cola or Nike within a title, so litigious are those corporations.
Apologies for the early digression.
This is what provoked me to this blog: I titled my latest novel, The Seventh Man. I knew that Graham Greene had his Third Man. And I had a suspicion that there had been books about the Oxbridge spy rings, each speculating on who might have been the fifth or sixth member. If memory serves the last of those spies to have been outed had been 'The Keeper of the Royal Paintings.'
I thought seven was safe so didn't bother to check if anyone had yet reached there.
Never assume.
Because when I did do an online search, post-publication, guess whose latest book popped up first in the listing? Only Haruki Murakami's The Seventh Man.
Happy as I am to be associated with Haruki Murakami, and in a way delighted that we both came up near simultaneously with the same title, given that he is thousands of times more famous than I, our shared title has put my novel at something of a sales disadvantage.
The most annoying aspect is that my The Seventh Man was never its title during the writing. Its working title was Flow Chart, that being the process whereby I ordered the narrative. Only near the tale's end did I come to see that the book's focus was on what wasn't there, The Seventh Man.
There are so many pitfalls with titles. Take my Trees novel. Where I did do pre-publication checks.
Within the story the group of foresters called themselves The Tree Prospectus. So that the novel didn't get confused with the many text books titled Trees my original self-published title for the eBook was Trees: the Tree Prospectus. And I stuck with this even though an earlier search had shown that The Tree Prospectus itself had been the name chosen for a carbon offset scam, where no trees had been planted.
I thought that mine, being an obvious work of eco-fiction, the double title would avoid confusion with both text books and the then notorious scam. So far so good. People enjoyed the book. Except that the tradition (dare I say bookshop?) mindset of my Cardiff paperback publisher held that there was no such genre as eco-fiction, and he published Trees as a sort of mystery novel, with a tag line emphasising the death within the tale.
Ah well. Whoever said that getting a book into print was easy.... Getting a title should be.
I have found that the safest, the surest bet for an original title is one that emerges from the writing.
In my growing up we didn't have many novels in our house. The one that we did have, and that I read and re-read, spent long hours studying its glossy illustrations, was a battered hardback of RM Ballantyne's Coral Island. Coral Island is, my re-reading had me realise, one of those tales that says more about the attitudes and values of the society from which the narrator comes than of the exotic events the narrator describes.
I knew that I wouldn't be the first to base an updated novel on Coral Island. William Golding had done so with a more realistic and contemporary boys' own adventure, Lord of the Flies. I took my three lads far into the future, again as children of empire, but this time as part of an inter-galactic empire. To give a broad clue to its inspiration I titled their tale, Balant.
The four SF books that grew out of Balant took each their titles from the different tales told. Happiness: a planet; You Human: the Leander Chronicle (nothing whatsoever to do with Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Far and away my favourite of all his books. And while I'm at it nor was Haruki Murakami an inspiration for my 3-in-one detective novel, The Company Chronicles. Just love all those hard Cs together.) I've again digressed. The final two of the Balant series was Not Now: Death, Dreams, and Reasons for Living and Eternals: the unMaking of Heaven.
Going the other way, some of my novels grew out of their titles. The End of Science Fiction for one. While Once Were Windows Once Were Doors grew out of my fascination with ruins and my wondering what would become of a world where Jerusalem, the most fought over place in history, was finally and completely obliterated.
My non-fiction Anti began with its title. And I was certain of We Need Madmen from its very first page. The Care Vortex, Something's Wrong and Two Bridgwater Days I had no need to check. Likewise the long titles for my historical novels.
For my next novel – the writing of it about half-way through – I have already decided on the title. I have done a search for possible duplication and there are, as yet, none like it. I am however keeping a weather eye on Murakami.
Fingers crossed. (Not the title.)
© Sam Smith 2nd February 2023
The 7th Man - http://shorturl.at/afmV8
Technically it doesn't matter if it has. A book title, unlike a trademark, Coca-Cola or Nike say, cannot be copyrighted. Would however be a risk to even include Coca-Cola or Nike within a title, so litigious are those corporations.
Apologies for the early digression.
This is what provoked me to this blog: I titled my latest novel, The Seventh Man. I knew that Graham Greene had his Third Man. And I had a suspicion that there had been books about the Oxbridge spy rings, each speculating on who might have been the fifth or sixth member. If memory serves the last of those spies to have been outed had been 'The Keeper of the Royal Paintings.'
I thought seven was safe so didn't bother to check if anyone had yet reached there.
Never assume.
Because when I did do an online search, post-publication, guess whose latest book popped up first in the listing? Only Haruki Murakami's The Seventh Man.
Happy as I am to be associated with Haruki Murakami, and in a way delighted that we both came up near simultaneously with the same title, given that he is thousands of times more famous than I, our shared title has put my novel at something of a sales disadvantage.
The most annoying aspect is that my The Seventh Man was never its title during the writing. Its working title was Flow Chart, that being the process whereby I ordered the narrative. Only near the tale's end did I come to see that the book's focus was on what wasn't there, The Seventh Man.
There are so many pitfalls with titles. Take my Trees novel. Where I did do pre-publication checks.
Within the story the group of foresters called themselves The Tree Prospectus. So that the novel didn't get confused with the many text books titled Trees my original self-published title for the eBook was Trees: the Tree Prospectus. And I stuck with this even though an earlier search had shown that The Tree Prospectus itself had been the name chosen for a carbon offset scam, where no trees had been planted.
I thought that mine, being an obvious work of eco-fiction, the double title would avoid confusion with both text books and the then notorious scam. So far so good. People enjoyed the book. Except that the tradition (dare I say bookshop?) mindset of my Cardiff paperback publisher held that there was no such genre as eco-fiction, and he published Trees as a sort of mystery novel, with a tag line emphasising the death within the tale.
Ah well. Whoever said that getting a book into print was easy.... Getting a title should be.
I have found that the safest, the surest bet for an original title is one that emerges from the writing.
In my growing up we didn't have many novels in our house. The one that we did have, and that I read and re-read, spent long hours studying its glossy illustrations, was a battered hardback of RM Ballantyne's Coral Island. Coral Island is, my re-reading had me realise, one of those tales that says more about the attitudes and values of the society from which the narrator comes than of the exotic events the narrator describes.
I knew that I wouldn't be the first to base an updated novel on Coral Island. William Golding had done so with a more realistic and contemporary boys' own adventure, Lord of the Flies. I took my three lads far into the future, again as children of empire, but this time as part of an inter-galactic empire. To give a broad clue to its inspiration I titled their tale, Balant.
The four SF books that grew out of Balant took each their titles from the different tales told. Happiness: a planet; You Human: the Leander Chronicle (nothing whatsoever to do with Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Far and away my favourite of all his books. And while I'm at it nor was Haruki Murakami an inspiration for my 3-in-one detective novel, The Company Chronicles. Just love all those hard Cs together.) I've again digressed. The final two of the Balant series was Not Now: Death, Dreams, and Reasons for Living and Eternals: the unMaking of Heaven.
Going the other way, some of my novels grew out of their titles. The End of Science Fiction for one. While Once Were Windows Once Were Doors grew out of my fascination with ruins and my wondering what would become of a world where Jerusalem, the most fought over place in history, was finally and completely obliterated.
My non-fiction Anti began with its title. And I was certain of We Need Madmen from its very first page. The Care Vortex, Something's Wrong and Two Bridgwater Days I had no need to check. Likewise the long titles for my historical novels.
For my next novel – the writing of it about half-way through – I have already decided on the title. I have done a search for possible duplication and there are, as yet, none like it. I am however keeping a weather eye on Murakami.
Fingers crossed. (Not the title.)
© Sam Smith 2nd February 2023
The 7th Man - http://shorturl.at/afmV8