By: kurt

kurt — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 17:34:07 +0000

Thanks, but I’m not (quite) that stupid. My friend told me about Schary’s book early on, when I was thinking about a lot of different titles, and I decided I didn’t care. Spackman’s out-of-print Heyday wasn’t listed on Amazon when I started focusing seriously on titles, and the new “Nite Club Set” one appeared after I’d already decided on Heyday (and wouldn’t have stopped me even if I’d known about it). I guess my larger point is that almost no title hasn’t been used before, and if most people aren’t familiar with the earlier uses, it doesn’t really matter so much. For instance, I published a book of essays years ago called The Real Thing, which I knew was also the title of a Henry James short story; and when Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing appeared two years after my little book, my earlier use was irrelevant — Stoppard’s, obviously, became The Real Thing that everyone knows.

By: Christian in NYC

Christian in NYC — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 22:09:16 +0000

Kurt, um, you know there’s this crazy thing called “Google” and an even crazier thing called “amazon.com” where, if one is crafty, one can type in the proposed name of one’s 640-page novel and find out, you know, whether somebody else has already used said name. I’m surprised your publiser, at least, didn’t at some point bother to do some rudimentary research like that. But, hey, I work in publishing and I see magnificent oversights like this all the time. Next time: google it.

Comments on: You can call your book Heyday, too

By: kurt

By: Christian in NYC