I did a search on Amazon (and a Google search also) before deciding to use The Scarecrow for a title to the fourth volume of my Dark Tales of the Civil War series. Nothing much came up, surprisingly, other than The Wizard of Oz references, and certainly not the exact title, The Scarecrow and other stories. It was only after I had published that an identically titled book appeared, one by G. Ranger Wormser. And I’m also now seeing another book, one by Walter De LaMare. In any case, titles aren’t copyrighted and the Wormser book was written and published over 100 years ago. Having said that, I’ll also state that I prefer to come up with original titles.
A big reason I picked that particular story to be the title is because I used the letters from my earlier books to make up the title. I like to stick with the same font and style. That title was short and I had all of the letters. Crazy, I know. LOL. I especially did this early on, before brushing up on my Photoshop skills. It was a case of cropping out and then cleaning up each letter, and then fitting them all together on the new cover, along with the same image. To borrow an idea from computer programming, Reuse, Reuse, Reuse–why reinvent the wheel when you have code that already works? The use of letters I already have is still a time-consuming process, and would in fact be easier for me to just use a different font. But, like I mentioned, I wanted to keep the style similar for the series. And, it is extremely difficult to find a decent cover designer. As a side note, I also pulled from the same letters (but changed the color) for my book Esmirana’s Trunk. If you look closely at the actual cover for Esmirana’s Trunk, you can see that the letter ‘K’ isn’t exactly right. I didn’t have a K in the titles of the first two books in the Dark Tales series, and had to sort of create it. I’m not an expert on fonts, but it works.
Okay, so, this other book, The Scarecrow and other stories, written by G. Ranger Wormser (originally published in 1918), is a very good book. If you want to read it, you can find it FREE on Amazon Kindle. I, of course, felt obligated to read the book to make sure that the content was, in fact, different than what I had written. I will advise against purchasing the audio version. I also did that after reading the book on kindle. I thought I was getting the whole book when I ordered the audio, but it was only the title story. I was disappointed that all of the stories weren’t included. Amazon refunded my purchase for the audio. The stories are good, and I wanted to listen to them. The title story was well done in the audio version. I hope that one day they (whoever released the one story) do release the whole book in audio. The stories are unique, well written, dark and quirky, which is especially interesting considering the time period in which they were written and published. The stories are quite varied. Another interesting fact is that G. Ranger Wormser was a woman. The fact that the author was a woman wouldn’t be such a curious thing if she were writing today. I say this mainly due to the dark nature of the stories. Perhaps I’m a chauvinist, or limited in my thinking about it from a male perspective. It just seems to me that it might have been difficult for a woman of that time period to have published a book of quirky and dark tales. I could be wrong, of course; I have done no research on the subject. But more to the point, “The Scarecrow” was significantly different than my story of the same name. I want to discuss the stories further, for other reasons, and will probably come back to this book in another post. I love finding semi-obscure books, stories, etc. and recommending them. This book of stories is an interesting compilation for anyone who is a curious explorer of stories, and it is one of many books that should not be lost to time. Is it the greatest book I’ve ever read? No, I’m not saying that. I am glad in the end, however, that I did use the same title, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have come across it.
Now, let me discuss my book Write Play Love, and lay out why I used that particular title–especially since I said that I prefer to be original.
Here is the truth: I didn’t set out to imitate the title Eat Pray Love. My original, working title was something generic, like Writing Short Stories, or How to Write Short Stories. Pretty uninspiring, right? I wanted something that captured attention, and yet I needed something that would indicate what the book was about. Writing the book was easy enough. I simply let loose in my conversational style and out it all flowed. I wanted to come up with a good, catchy and original title. I gave it some thought and nothing was really hitting me. I can’t say that the Eat Pray Love title jumped into my mind and twisted itself into Write Play Love. I don’t actually know what prompted it. Though it didn’t jump in and stick, it sort of creeped in and then took hold and then definitely stuck. I actually thought, the whole way through the process, that something else would surface. Nothing did. Did I feel uncomfortable about using a title that was so similar? Yes, especially early on. And then I sort of looked around and noticed that, with regard to marketing, this is pretty common.
And what’s hitting me now is the parental admonition; something along the lines of whether it would be a wise choice to jump off of a cliff or jump in a lake just because everyone else is doing it. I can hear my mother’s voice starting with “Sure, and I suppose if . . .” I’m not sure where this is coming from. All that comes to mind is a vague recollection of being a kid and a sister wanting to wear tights to school (or something to do with tights), or my younger brother wanting to rip holes in his bluejeans. I guess I could go back even further to my oldest sister wanting to wear a miniskirt. In any case, you get my point . . .
It’s true, regardless. I started seeing this type of thing everywhere. The book titled The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** (I don’t have the obscuring characters all correct, and it varies depending on the store displaying the book. I’ve seen different copies . . .), is a semi-recent example. I will say that the first time I saw this book on display, it caught my attention. I chuckled, though I have yet to purchase or read it. And then later, I saw another title that was similar. I thought, oh, the author has another book out already. I looked at the name and saw that this book was by a completely different author. There are many other examples, of course.
And then too, what about all of the parodies of titles, or books and movies that play off of each other? I’m thinking of the movie, The 41 Year Old Virgin Who Knocked Up Sarah Marshall and Felt Super Bad about it. And also 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I haven’t seen these, but the titles crack me up (which is mostly why I brought them up).
Am I trying to use these examples to justify my use of the Eat Pray Love title? Yes, I guess so. I still feel a little guilty. Maybe.
In my book on Formatting (and elsewhere), I discuss covers and how I went to 99 Designs to get the cover created for Write Play Love. There were something like 107 designs that I had to choose from in the end. I narrowed the choices down and went to a marketing research site called Pickfu. On this site, you can submit up to 8 designs for a group of complete strangers to choose which cover is more marketable. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I had my favorite top two, one of which was really just a black version of the cover I went with. I would probably have chosen the black one. The group picked the white one, so I went with it. Why I bring this all up is that the people (again, total strangers), explain, or give comments on the choices and why they picked whichever one over another. Two of these people commented on my playing on the Eat Pray Love title. One of the people was especially critical, saying something to the effect that they didn’t even like having to choose from such a title. This person lambasted me for trying to be “cute” by playing on the title, and said that I was apparently “not creative enough to come up with my own title.” This person reluctantly relented, and voted. In a sense, they were right, and I wondered whether the title choice would turn people off from buying the book. On the other hand, I thought, hey buddy, the whole book is creative, as it is about creative writing. What have you done? Let’s see your work. This was just my knee jerk reaction, of course, and I pushed it aside. I do try to look at things logically and objectively.
From the marketing aspect, this title was going to catch people’s attention. More so than the other generic titles I had come up with. Even though people might disagree with my use of it, the title would catch their attention and they would remember it. The question then became a matter of what percentage of people would be turned off by it. There was really no way to know. I did go into the local Barnes and Noble (not specifically for this reason, as I like to read also) and asked an employee and the manager what their opinions on the matter would be. Would they be turned off by this, if they were a customer? The manager remained neutral. Or at least I don’t remember her saying one way or another, though she did say the cover looked really nice (at that point I only had a photo on my phone to show). The other employee said it wouldn’t bother him in the least. He even mentioned other titles and agreed that it was pretty common.
When it comes down to it, who knows if I was right in playing off of the Eat Pray Love title? All I knew was that it stuck with me and seemed to shut out any other ideas. And it seemed like a good (and logical) marketing tactic. God knows, marketing is tough–a lot more difficult than writing.
And just as in the example of The Scarecrow and other stories, I felt obligated to purchase the Elizabeth Gilbert book and read it to make sure there weren’t any similarities other than the title. In this case, I just bought the audible version. I knew after listening to a very small portion (just the first chapter or so) that the two books were totally different. I’ll probably finish listening to it at some point.
So was I right or wrong in playing off of her title?
I don’t know.
Will there always be the hint floating around in the back of my mind that somehow I cheated, or took the lazy way out? Maybe, or probably, a little. All I know is that once Write Play Love creeped into my mind, it stuck and I couldn’t shake it. I could wake up tomorrow and have another title in mind that I like better. If so, I’ll switch it. Has this title in any way helped to increase my sales of the book? I have no idea.