My whodunit, Catch a Falling Star, was briefly called Wild Regrets, from The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde:And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who live more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
Then I hit on the much better title, Catch a Falling Star; googled it anxiously - no one else had used it for a novel. Hurrah!
And now Jade Goody has snaffled it, for a ghosted autobiography to come out next month. Plih.
You can still use it, Lexi. There aint no copyright on titles (though I think I'd be feeling a bit pah, if this has happened to me!).
ReplyDeleteNik
Lexi, just who do you think you are?
ReplyDeleteJade Goody is a celebrity, and thus has rights you would not even dream of.
Nik is not enirely correct in his belief that there's no copyright in titles. True, it's not yet on the statute books, but your use of Jade's title (hers, not yours, because she's a celeb and you're not) is likely to prompt parliament to introduce legislation. In a departure from normal practice, the relevant law will be retroactive.
You're on your way to Holloway, Lexi, and I've got no sympathy.
And it doesn't end there. God just hates it when nonentities tread on the toes of celebrities. My all-time favourite book is Dante's Inferno (Dorothy L. Sayers translation), and I'm even now trying to work out which circle of Hell is waiting for you.
God is going to be so angry . . .
Yes, Nik, what I think is that by the time CaFS (mine) is published, Jade Goody will be but a distant memory.
ReplyDeleteIain, how transparent you are. It's plain the whole object of your comment was to let everyone know that your favourite book is Dante's Inferno, not The Da Vinci Code as we all believed.
Titles can get used more than once. Recently I changed my book's title to Fury and when I googled I found the same title had been used by Salman Rushdie no less. But I'm still using it anyway - at least for now.
ReplyDeleteI have a book being published next month. It is called The Lion and the Eagle. Many books are called The Lion and the Eagle. I do not care.
ReplyDeleteListen, Lexi. You got me wrong. I tried The Da Vinci Code but it was too difficult for me, so I just went back to Dante. I have a tabloid brain, and believe me, there's nothing more tabloid in all literature than the Inferno. It's all sordid crime and sex'n'violence, promise, and you've got this snooty narrator simultaneously smacking his lips and telling you how shocking it all is.
I want everybody to read it. It's wonderful.
Congratulations on having your book published, Iain.
ReplyDeleteI'll try to get my hands on a copy of Dante's Inferno and check it out.