Can Books Have The Same Title?

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Every year, hundreds of new books are published in a huge range of genres, languages, and more.

However, this huge turnout of literary works must mean that it’s impossible for every single work to have their own unique title – or is it?

Here we are going to be looking at books to see if it’s possible for two books to have the exact same title and what that means.

So, whether you are stuck searching for a book or wondering what to call your own novel, find out here if a book can share its name with others!

Are Book Titles Copyrighted?

Legally, a single book title cannot be copyrighted in the United States, which means that it is perfectly legal to name your book the same name as another.

There are slight variances we will discuss later, but if you want to publish your book and name it a single word or popular phrase, you are perfectly allowed to do so even if there are dozens of other books that already have that same title.

US courts have claimed that book titles are not ‘copyrightable’ because they do not contain a certain amount of originality.

So, a potential book title such as ‘The Blue Moon’ is too vague in order to be copyrighted and thus can be used as the title for multiple books by numerous authors all around the world.

So, yes – books can indeed have the same title!

The only difference comes when you have a series of books. US courts will allow trademarks for the name of a series of books but not for stand alone titles.

So, if you wanted to try and name your book ‘Harry Potter’ you are out of luck because there is already a trademarked series of books under that name.

However, if there never was a ‘Harry Potter’ series and just the single book, then the title ‘Harry Potter’ would never have been trademarked.

This means that stand alone books can share the same title as other stand alone books but you cannot share the same title as a series of books.

Passing Off Laws

So, legally, books can indeed share the same title but there is a law that helps protect authors from having their ionic or super unique book title from being copied and used.

The unfair competition law or the ‘passing off’ law is a law that prevents books from using the titles of famous or iconic single novels.

This is because some authors may try to name their novel the same title as a well known book in hopes that readers will see the title, pick up their book and purchase it after mistaking it for the more popular one written by a completely different author.

This way, the second author seeks to sell more books and capitalize on their customer’s mistakes by ‘passing off’ their book as the original, popular one with the same title.

The passing off law aims to prevent authors from taking advantage of their customers by allowing authors to sue those who use a very similar or the same name as their bestseller or classic novel.

This means that if you publish a single novel, the title will be protected even though it is not a part of a series as long as it is a bestseller.

For example, Wuthering Heights cannot be copyrighted because it is a single published novel.

However, if you were to name your book Wuthering Heights, you could be sued for trying to ‘pass off’ your novel as the Emily Bronte classic novel and trick customers into buying your book.

However, for this law to work, the original novel’s name must be very distinctive.

Descriptive or generic terms are often allowed to slide in the US courts, especially if rearranged into a different order.

However, the more complex or unique a book’s name is (for example, The Great Gatsby or The Da Vinci Code) the less likely you will be able to get away with naming your novel the same title.

Why A Unique Book Title Is Important

Sometimes, you can accidentally name your novel the same title completely by mistake.

This was the situation author Emily Schultz found herself in when she named her new novel ‘Joyland’ only to discover that Stephen King also wrote a novel by the same name.

However, the vagueness of the title was enough to protect Schlutz, although she still received negative reviews on Amazon from customers who purchased her book thinking it was King’s.

Although she received an increase in revenue and made a tongue and cheek blog post called ‘Spending the Stephen King Money’, her novel received low reviews that could have damaged it’s recommendations on online e-commerce websites.

These low reviews were nothing to do with the content of the book itself – they were simply from customers who did not realize that the book they were purchasing was not Stephen King’s Joyland.

So, sometimes naming your book the same title as another book can negatively affect your reputation and your book’s.

Not only that but if you also give your book a very vague title that is shared by so many other novels, it reduces the chances of customers even finding your book in the first place.

Giving your book a memorable title makes it stand out more and thus, more likely to be picked up off the shelf and remembered to be recommended to others.

So, it’s clear the negatives of sharing a book title outweigh the potential benefits!

Conclusion

So, book titles of stand alone novels cannot be copyrighted which means that multiple books can indeed share the same name.

However, if you try to name your book the same title as a very popular or classic standalone novel (say Frankenstein) then you are opening yourself up to a court case for trying to ‘pass off’ your book as another and trick readers

This means that while you cannot trademark or copyright a book title for a standalone book, there are still laws in place to prevent others from taking advantage of your success.

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