Fiction
Related: About this forum7 books that share the same title
If youre someone who frequently searches for books online, you may have found yourself pondering the question: can two different books, by different authors, have the same title? The answer, as the books below show, is yes. At least in the United States, book titles are not copyrighted and, aside from internet searches, theres no surefire way to figure out if your book will have the same title as someone elses.
Sometimes books share a title because one is a backlist release when the other comes out, but other times they may publish within weeks of each other. It seems most common to have titles double up when authors have chosen shorter names for their books, and some of the choices here do share titles, but vary in subtitles.
Further complicating the issue is that internet-enabled book buyers may end up purchasing the wrong book, often because a buzzy new release caused them not to dive into the plot summary for the actual copy they were purchasing. The seven examples below are just a sampling of matching title books, but they provide some fun trivia, and a few laughs, as to how authors have responded to this unique situation.
life after life by jill mccorkle and life after life by kate atkinson
Joyland by emily schultz and Joyland by stephen king
A Person of Interest by susan choi and Person of Interest by theresa schwegel
The Cloud Atlas by liam callanan and Cloud Atlas by david mitchel
Fire and Fury by randall hansen and Fire and Fury by michael wolff
Elsewhere by gabrielle zevin and Rlsewhere: A Memoir by richard russo
Wonder by rachel vail and Wonder by r.j. palacio
https://bookriot.com/books-with-the-same-title
Atticus
(15,124 posts)by Stormy Daniels?
Just sayin'-----
PoindexterOglethorpe
(26,849 posts)is another title that is shared by at least three books. Maybe more.
The novel of that name written by Andrew Pyper is excellent.
hermetic
(8,663 posts)for the weekly reading posts here, I have discovered MANY books with the same titles.
Then I had a rather unpleasant experience with one: Unrestricted Access, by James Rollins. This is a collection of his short stories that was published in the past year. I really wanted to buy it so I went online to Thrift Books to see if I could find a used copy. I thought I had and ordered it along with a couple of others I'd been wanting to read.
When it came I was like WTF? It IS Unrestricted Access but its by someone named James Robbins and it was self-published. I haven't read it yet since I'm still a bit peeved by what I believe to be a con job by this Robbins dude. I think Rollins' lawyers ought to be talking to this guy, if they aren't already.
Buyers Beware!
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)In the linked article it said books are not copywritten,
thus allowing for books to have the same (or similar) names.
bif
(24,267 posts)There are at least two books with this title. Which I think is surprising, since it's a bit of an unusual title.