This morning I received a tweet from someone I don’t know. It stated that The Hunger was written by Whitley Strieber, with a link to an Amazon page with that novel on it. I guessed that he was making reference to my novel The Hunger not being the only one with that title out there. I looked the guy up on Twitter and found a pattern of finding things that amuse him on the net and making sarcastic comments. In other words, a Troll. If that floats his boat, he’s welcome to the excitement of his life. But he also made a point. When I first wrote the novel back in 2006 I gave it the title Hunger, which was a reference both to the vampire hunger of the heroine, but also the hunger for drugs she had fought as a living addict. When I decided to put the book out on Amazon in December of 2011, I discovered that the title had already been used many times over, by Knut Hamsun and George Egerton, by Elise Blackwell, by Jack Shepherd and John R. Butterly, among others. I could have called the book The Vampire Massacres of Tampa, but that didn’t fit quite as well. So I added a The to the title and it became The Hunger, which didn’t seem to have as many other books named the same. But there were some, like the one written by Strieber, and another by Ciana Stone. I also titled a steampunk novel I just put on the net Daemon, which was the type of creature that terrorized the city and the name of the most powerful mage on the planet. Also discovered that the name has been done before. I have another novel I will probably put out next year titled Soulless, which is also the name of at least one horror novel already out there. But the name fits. I guess I could write a book called Ringworld, about a planet where everyone wears magic rings, but I don’t think I will.
We went over this topic with a lawyer at the Tallahassee Writer’s Association a month or so ago, and there is nothing illegal about using the same title over, and long as I don’t use a copyrighted character like Harry Potter or Conan. The same goes for movies. Years ago I was looking for a movie called Is Paris Burning?, by Orson Wells. The movie is about the allied liberation of Paris from the Germans, and Hitler ordering that the city be burned. Instead I found a movie about Gay men dying of Aids. Not really the movie I was looking for. Now this is kind of funny in an industry that mandates that every actor must have a completely different name from any other. But multiple movies can have the same name, just like books. It can get confusing, but the author’s name is also prominently displayed on every book, so there really is no reason someone would buy the wrong book. So I will just keep picking out the best names and go from there.
Doug BrotherofCats Dandridge
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It’s true, a lot of books have the same title. Also true that there’s no law against it; titles aren’t copyrighted. Interesting point about actors having to have separate and distinct names but the same doesn’t hold true for movie titles. I guess it’s a different organization that governs these things.
When I released Words in the Wind, I found four others with the same title — and there might be more. I just stopped looking after that. My goal is to make mine the one people know and remember!
Sounds like your commenter has way too much time on his hands. I avoid one-word titles at all costs, because I don’t want my books to be mistaken for anyone else’s. Turns out that creating completely original and memorable titles can be the hardest part of the writing job. But I enjoy the challenge, and I think it’s worth it.
I actually like one word titles, much more than short three to five word ones. And some titles just fit. Daemon was about a creature of nature ( a Daemon) and the name of the antagonist was Daemon, as was his corporation, so the word just resonated through the book, and the one word title was perfect. So in finding several other books with the same title, some of which had nothing to do with Daemons, I decided to stick with the name. When I put out Soulless next year I may try to come up with a different name, but as the book is about a man who loses his soul and conscience through a teleportation like process that disassembles his body in one place and reassembles it in another through nanotech. Something is missing, something unmeasurable, and he become a complete psychopath. I guess I could call it The Man With No Conscience or Psychopath, but those don’t fit nearly as well.
🙂 I like meaningful titles, but they can really get out of hand if you’re not careful. Yeah, The Man with . . . would be a mouthful, wouldn’t it?