Hold Your Competition Lightly
Advice for authors on handling similar or same works, titles, and covers (with examples)
As a publisher, it’s common for me to receive emails from authors fretting over their competition. This slices many more ways than you might imagine, beyond the typical concern that some other writer or author is writing or has written a similar book.
Authors also dislike, understandably so, that another book has the same or similar title; that another book uses the same stock image; that another book has a similar vibe. More often than not, authors react badly in the face of competition. Abundance can be a hard thing to cultivate when you imagine someone else sucking up your potential readership; when you imagine someone has stolen your title, ripped off your book cover design. We authors are a sensitive bunch, it’s true. But in book publishing, I urge authors to hold the competition lightly. It’s not like other industries, and it’s important to know or remember the numbers.
This little tidbit comes from Michael Castleman’s new book, The Untold Story of Books:
“Last year [2023], 2.7 million books were published between publishers and self-published authors. Michael puts that into perspective for us in the book, writing that that translates into 7,400 releases every day, 308 per hour, 5 every minute.”
Keep in mind that all of these books have covers, and all of them have titles. It’s an interesting fact to keep in mind that 10,000 babies are born in the US every day, and lots of them have the same name. (Though, of course, American individualism is the reason people have names like Apple and X æ A-12.)
In book publishing, however, competition is different. Publishing are obsessed with comparative titles not because they’re worried about competition, but because they need previous competitive tiles in order to make a case to buyers that there’s a readership for a given book. Publishers also like to follow convention, and being too outside the box doesn’t usually work in authors’ favor. I urge writers to think of their competition as an indicator that there’s a market for your book. To stray too far or to try too hard to break the mold usually results in publishers feeling like they won’t know how to sell your book or find your readers.
Where your writing is concerned, Mark Twain captured this best when he wrote in 1906:
“There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”
Where covers and titles are concerned, same goes. You can’t copyright a title, exclusives on stock images are expensive, and your readers, by and large, don’t give a damn if you have the same title or cover as another author—I promise. Here are a few case studies from She Writes Press and SparkPress books (alongside their doppelgangers).
Titles
Several years ago, I got an abrasive email from an author who claimed we’d “stolen” her title. She was incensed, in fact, and posted about it all over her Instagram. The novel she’d written wasn’t even on the same subject as ours, and you can’t copyright a title. Still, she was pissed, and wanted someone or something to direct her anger toward. She spent far more energy trashing us than promoting her own book, and when I looked for the book on Amazon today, I see it’s no longer there. Makes me sad.
The reality, given the volume of books in the world, it’s hard to find unique titles. We often do, but more often than not, we choose a title that already exists. We try to work within some parameters—that the book that shares our title not be in the same genre, or that it not be too recent (meaning two years old or newer). Even then, sometimes we go for a title because it’s the best title for the book, and sometimes you choose a title and design a cover, and then another book pops up on Amazon with your title. What are you gonna do?
Tip: Always do a search on Amazon before you finalize your title, but if it’s taken, unless it’s trademarked, you can still use it.
Covers
Many book covers use stock images, and not even the Big Five publishers (usually) spring for the cost. As such, you’re going to end up seeing book covers that utilize the same images from time to time. In every case when this happens, my authors are upset and wonder what their recourse is. In every case I let them know that readers don’t care. Even if you did want to spend the money for exclusive rights, there are other images in the world that are similar. I can’t imagine a reader who, upon seeing a cover with the same image as a book they own or have read, would on principle reject that book. More likely, its familiarity (or just the fact that it’s a great image) is appealing. Either way, this will happen and all you can do as an author is breathe.
Tip: If you find a book online with your image on it, try to think like a reader, not an author. If you were to ask me what cover images grace my favorite novels and memoirs, I could only speak to those in vague terms. I’d have to pull the books off my shelf to really tell you. Covers matter, but to readers they’re about impressions and feelings, not usually imprinted on their memories in the way a cover image invariably is for the author.
Turn your competition into an asset
One piece of advice I gave an author just this week was to reconsider her competition as an opportunity for collaboration. If there’s someone who’s written a book similar to yours, perhaps you can get a blurb from them, or blurb their book. Maybe there’s an opportunity to do a panel together, or to appear at a bookstore event in conversation about your shared experience or expertise.
Most readers do and will read more than one book on a subject matter they’re interested in. I’ve read tens of parenting books, and countless addiction memoirs and travel stories. I have a friend who reads every World War II novel she can get her hands on, and if you’re a reader of a particular genre—triller, mystery, sci-fi, romance—I imagine you churn through books like the rest of your genre-loving tribe.
So when you find an author who’s doing what you’re doing, or who has the same title or the same cover—say hi. Explore your options. Approach the situation from abudance rather than scarcity, and see what outcomes might be possible.
Author Ruta Sepetys' debut novel was titled "Between Shades of Gray". It came out in 2011, and did modestly well, until a few months later a book came out titled "Fifty Shades of Gray". Ruta told the kidlkit community with a bit of a laugh that she sold many a book to a mixed up customer, and that helped launch her best-selling career. So it's not always a bad thing.
Great piece! When I was a book series editor, I was constantly explaining the competing titles section of our proposal requirements. Many authors thought "uniqueness" was important when in fact we needed evidence of an existing market.