In truth, I feel like crap. Yay! The sun is bright, though, and I’m told it will be warm later. I’ll try to spend a little time outside in it.
Instead, I’m plugging away at Man Bites World. Why not? What else am I going to do with my time, read Facebook?
Let me put a question or three to you before I log off: How do you guys feel about a book that has the same title as another book? Does it matter if they’re in different genres? If the previous one is out of print? Still in print? And how would you go about judging the popularity of that older book to determine how well-remembered that title is?
Ugh. Not braining well today, but it’s time to log off and get back to my revisions.
I was contemplating a title for a script so did a search on IMDb:
http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=blackout
— and 31 movies all with that same title was enough to make me choose something else!
But I wouldn’t scrap a title just because it was used before. Apparently nobody in Hollywood worries about that. At all.
I’d just consider if having the same title would cause some confusion for your audience. So if it’s in a different genre or the other book isn’t too famous or is out of print, I think that’d be more than fine.
Thanks. I’ll run it past my editor and see what she says.
I was going to make a joke about changing your title to BROWNOUT but of course there are already a couple of movies with that in the title.
I liked the title, FUGUE, for this one since it’s somewhat indie and evokes both Bach and the psychological condition. But as luck would have it there’s only one other movie with that title and it has a release year of 2010.
My feeling is that as long as people don’t imemdiately think of the other book when your title is mentioned then it’s fine.
For instance, it doesn’t matter how long ago Stir of Echoes came out, that title’s off limits.
However, the very fact that there are 32 movies titled Blackout probably means it would’ve been okay, albeit drastically unoriginal, to use that.
I assume when you say FUGUE is “indie” you mean most people won’t understand it. :)
I’ll show my title ideas to my editor. She may laugh it off the table, previous book or no. Thanks
“I assume when you say FUGUE is “indie” you mean most people won’t understand it.”
EXACTLY!
I kinda like Man Bite World — especially if it’s the werewolf one.
I like it, too, but it’s not going to be The One. All the Twenty Palaces titles are [Noun] of [Noun].