I’m sure there may be other examples but it is Barry Eisler’s series of John Rain novels that have bugged me. I don’t recall how many there are in his series, but I think he’s changed the titles of over half of them.
On his own website he claims that the reason is because the publishers originally selected titles that he didn’t like. But it’s damn infuriating when you purchase what you believe is a new novel, and it turns out to be one you’ve already read, but renamed.
I think he is letting his own arrogance over his literary work get the best of him…or me for that matter. Let’s be real, a fictional series about a mercenary isn’t likely to win the Nobel prize. Titles don’t really matter that much except for marketing purposes.
Any other examples of this…and does this bother you as well?
Several of Agatha Christie’s novels were published under multiple titles. I bought a lot of the “blue leatherette” Christies off eBay, being careful to get the whole set, and was a little put out to discover that some of them were duplicate stories. I guess the people publishing the leatherettes didn’t bother to look into that.
But I’ve never seen it happen to a live, active author’s work. That must suck.
forget titles what about when whole chapters get moved ?
Ok I had a 1973 warners movie tie in paperback of the godfather … now right after mike saves the don in the hospital the last line in the chapter leads in to a chapter ("the don tries to say “so what strange men have tried to kill me all my life”) about the dons personal history and his rise to where they were before he was shot
Now in the last reprint I bought (which was by someplace ive never heard of) moved that chapter almost to the end of the book and threw me off totally …
That often happens when books cross the pond. I used to look for items and books related to Bernard Hubbard, S.J. He was a Jesuit who explored much of Alaska, and his books read like adventure novels. Anyway, I had purchased the two books that he had written, and suddenly I saw an unfamiliar title on ebay, so immediately bought it without checking it out first. It turned out to be a retitled version of one of his books, issued for the British market.
That reminds me of those bootleg “200 in 1” Game Boy cartridges. The coolest idea when you’re a kid, but when you finally get it only 10 are playable, with the rest just either the same game with a pixel swap, or simply broken and buggy.
Sometimes the names are changed to cash in on the movie adaptation. The Harry Potter one is particularly bothersome and condescending because the Philosopher’s Stone is an actual thing, but Sorcerer sounds “flashier.”
The Philosopher’s Stone makes sense, because it refers to an actual myth. The Sorcerer’s Stone doesn’t make sense, because it doesn’t. Also, it seems a bit condescending that ‘Americans might think it was a book/movie on philosophy’.
True story: When I first read Harry Potter, I did not know of the title change. When I got to the middle of the book where they finally say what the Sorcerer’s Stone is, I literally exclaimed out loud “Well, why didn’t they just call it the Philosopher’s Stone to begin with!?”.
Plenty of SF books were published under multiple titles while the authors were alive. For example, Poul Anderson wrote “War of the Wingmen,” and “Planet of No Return” which were later republished as “The Man Who Counts” and “Question and Answer.” I’ve seen a copy of Asimov’s Foundation titled “The Thousand Year Plan” as well.
Then there are authors who rework previously written books and republish under different names, like Clarke with “The City and The Stars”/“Against the Fall of Night.”
Once found a book called Cherry Ames and the Case of the Deadly Remedy on the bookmobile. I was thrilled, since I thought it was a Cherry Ames novel I hadn’t read. Turned out to be Cherry Ames: Rural Nurse, which I had.
In a similar vein, it certainly pissed me off when they rearranged the order of the Narnia books because they found some letter where he humored a kid with that idea instead of telling him or her that it was stupid idea for a first time reader, but might be interesting when rereading the series later on.
Changing movie titles infuriates me, certainly, if that’s not too far away from the topic. The movie released in '77 is called Star Wars, not A New Hope. The first Indiana Jones movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark, not Indiana Jones and the ROTLA. The Ewok Adventure not Caravan of Courage, etc. Can’t think of a good example that isn’t Lucas or mitigated by being a foreign movie being renamed in another market (like Sorcerer’s Stone (changed in the movie to reflect the book, I guess) or Dead Alive aka Brain Dead(that one apparently because another movie already had that title)).
Publishers loved changing titles to make them more exciting or evocative or just plain more sellable to the idiots* who bought such stuff back in the early days of paperbacks, the 40s and 50s. Hundreds of mysteries and sf books had their titles changed. For collectors, it sometimes seems that they all were. (Especially the digest-sized paperbacks, which had a far higher percentage of changed titles than the regular-sized paperbacks.)
That finally changed around the 1960s. I’m not certain why. WAGs are that hardback publishing got somewhat less high-toned, so titles could scream a little louder than they used to, or that more books appeared in paperback without first being published in hardback, or just that people started paying more attention and complaining when prices for paperbacks began soaring.
i.e. what the publishers thought of their readers, an attitude that seemed to be widespread.
Generally, yes. In most cases, I prefer the original title.
Do you know that they changed the title of the first James Bond novel – Casino Royale – to You Asked for It for the first US paperback publication. Why? “Casine Royale” has more appeal and more exotic suggestiveness than “You Asked For It” could ever have. On top of which, that was the title of a TV show at the time, where the audience wqrote in and suggested topics for the show. It’s not enticing as a book title at all.
So when they got to the Bond novel Moonraker – with its suggestion of rockets and maybe even space travel, they freakin’ did it again! What do you think they changed it to? Something sexy, right? Something suggesting spies and national security, of course. Nope. The first American paperback version became
Too Hot to Handle
The cover had a painting of a guy’s arm with the hand strangling a woman, or something. She doesn’t look very scared. She looks, actually, as if she might be Kate from The Taming of the Shrew, with Petrucchio’s arm on her. There’s nothing to pin down that the book even takes place in this century, until you flip it over and see in big letter SECRET AGENT 007 (although if you weren’t a follower of Fleming’s books, that wouldn’t mean much to you – the movies hadn’t made him famous yet).
Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone bothered me, too. Heck, I knew about the Philosopher’s Stone since I was a kid. Even if kid’s didn’t know what it meant, the book explains it. It’s not as if everyone knew what the “Sorceror’s Stone” was, either. Did they think that if they called it the “Philosopher’s Stone” kids would stay away, because they’d be afraid it was a book about Deductive Reasoning or Inductive Logic or something?
I don’t understand them retitling Murder on the Orient Express as Murder on the Calais Coach. The original title has the romance and mystery of the Orient Express in it. The latter sounds like it took place on the local line.
There are some cases where I don’t mind the retitling. Surely Ten Little Niggers , which became Ten Little Indians before becoming And Then There Were None profits from the less-offensive title. Conan the Conqueror tells you more than Howard’s original time Hour of the Dragon
This actually seems to have an explanation on Wikipedia:
The footnote goes to a Christie Reader’s Companion, so it’s probably reliable.
John Dickson Carr was an American who lived and published in England for most of his early career. Whole bunches of John Dickson Carr’s novels were changed as they crossed the Atlantic, one a great improvement. The Hollow Man became The Three Coffins. Most of the other changes were unnecessary.
Publishers use as much research and data to make decisions as soothsayers reading entrails did.
Quite a few of Agatha Christie’s books had their titles changed for American release. Lord Edgeware Dies became Thirteen at Dinner, Dumb Witness became Poirot Loses a Client, 4:50 from Paddington became What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw, and so forth. There are several other examples.
That’s one reason I could never get all that worked up about the change from Philosopher’s Stone to Sorcerer’s Stone. As a Christie reader from way back, I figured that’s just how things worked. Change the title when it’s released in the U.S.? What’s the big deal, it happens all the time!
