I take it you're using a battery of researchers for the book?

It sounds like your work must be poultry in motion!

I admit, it was fowl.

OK, who needs their beak clipping?? And it's- by!!! Get your facts right... Now let's have less of this fowl talk. ... I'll get me coat.... The new children's blockbuster, Keeper of the Enchanted Pool, available soon from all major online retailers.

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Bloggy

Going back to the topic, for a moment between puns...

The law of copyright is held not to apply to book titles, because they are too short. However, one needs to be carerful with quotations taken as titles. ‘The British Museum is Falling Down’ (originally called ‘Bloomsday’) was to be published as ‘The British Museum Had Lost Its Charm’, which is a line from Cole Porter’s song ‘A Foggy Day (In London Town)’; belatedly someone at the publishers realised they needed the Porter estate to OK that, and it refused, hence the meaningless title. The ‘King James Authorised’ Bible is Crown Copyright and hence that never expires, but if they were to sue anyone it would have been Hemingway for ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls. Also beware of foreign works, where the translation may be later than the original text and still in copyright.

There are however two things to be wary of: Trade Marks, which belong to their owners and any book that had (say) ‘Coca-Cola’ in its title might be a trade mark violation; and Passing Off laws. While the person who wrote the recent ‘Small World’ might well have never heard of the earler book and the words are a phrase in common use, it would be harder to claim that for ‘The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test’. If someone were to write a book entitled ‘Harry Potter and the xxx’, then the Rowling people might reasonably say that the author was attempting to pass off their own work as a Rowling book. In reality, such titles would almost certainly never hit the shops, because the publisher’s legal department would pick them up. Obscentity and defamation might also be possible problems.

Some duff titles I have reviewed for YWO: ‘Into The Red’ (a chick-lit), ‘Resort’ (adventure), ‘The Lonely Tree’ (coming of age literary), ‘Beyond Belief’ (medical crime), ‘Heartstorm’ (terrorism crime) ’22 Britannia Road’ (historical) and ‘Overlord’ (historical thriller).

In the OUP edition, it shows Dickens had a long list of about 20 possible names for ‘Hard Times’, gradually whittling them down and picking one. Joyce originally called ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ ‘Stephen Hero’.

Some ideas for book titles: try randomly opening the Bible or (as I did recently) Greek tragedies – they are full of great fresh lines. Or indeed Greek comedies – I’d love to write a book called ‘The Lion on the Cheesegrater’ (a line from ‘Lysistrata’, supposedly a sexual position).

Martin

I have no idea how it is with titles and I guess recycling is ok as long as it's not a famous book. I do the same: google and see what comes up.

Imma: I reviewed 'Shun the Dark' and I agree with you, the title does not do the book justice. At least I could see no connection to the plot and theme of the excerpt.

Keep writing.

I'm so sorry if only I had page down further I would have come across your posting...



I shall read your posting now to answer my question

The worst thing that can happen to a writer is to become a Writer. Mary McCarthy

The fact is, writing can be done only during the time when one ought to be doing something else. Isabel Paterson