Book Titles

[September skies]

Is there a place other than book store web sites (Amazon, Borders, etc.) where one can look up a title to see if it exists already?

I realize there are some books out with the same identical title, but how do you all do it?

I have one novel and one children's book I'm working on and have titles in mind but how does that work? And what if, when I finally finish the books, someone else has snatched up my titles?

As a newspaper reporter, we never worried about titles.... we just wrote and the editors gave it a title (whether we agreed with it or not, it was not up to us.)

[alleycat]

A large public library such as the New York Public Library's online catalog.

[brokenfingers]

You might also try the Library of Congress. I'm not sure but I believe it's supposed to have a copy of every book published in the US.

http://catalog.loc.gov/

[September skies]

Thank you. I checked out the Library of Congress thing and both of my titles came up with no searches. Just for fun I wrote in Hattie Get A Haircut and there it was. So cool. Thank you for telling me about it.

[AdamH]

Google's my best friend. It may not have EVERY book ever made but I err on the side that it'll have the most current and most popular ones. But there's only a finite number of titles out there since there's a finite amount of words in the English language, so there's bound to be some repetition.

I think you're safe as long as you don't pick something that's considered a classic (like "Great Expectations" or "Green Eggs and Ham") or something current (like "Davinci Code" or "Harry Potter").

[Garpy]

surely though, Amazon's your best tool for the job. They've stock gazillions of books and a dedicated search engine for the task.

[maestrowork]

There are books currently in pre-release or production that have not gone into any of these database yet. But the odds that one of those books have your title are pretty small.

[Writing Again]

When you submit a book your title is only "tentatively titled" anyway and you can suggest more than one title. I've listed up to three I liked.

Unless you are Stephen King or Danielle Steele your vote on this bears little weight. In fact Suzette Haden Elgin had written several successful books on "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense" and was working on another one when the publisher titled one "The Final Word on The Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense" which led readers to believe she was not going to write any more on the subject.

When the next book came out readers were nonplused.

"Hey, it wasn't my choice of title," was the only reply she could give.

[Cathy C]

I'd also mention that you can't copyright a book title, so it's always possible that someone will put the same title in the marketplace while your book is in production. Case in point: Our first book with Tor Books, Hunter's Moon, came out in December of last year. Another paranormal author, Lori Handeland, titled HER book Hunter's Moon. It was released by St. Martin's Press (a sister company of Tor) in January of this year. One month apart --- in the same genre! :eek: Fortunately, Lori was super about the kerfuffle (including a couple of instances of book stores ordering in the wrong books for signings! Sigh...)


We all survived and the confusion, while annoying at first, is now amusing. Feel free to try to find a unique name. It's always good to stand out. But don't sweat the small stuff! Pick a title you like and move on. :D