When I was a kid, I loved reading Alistair Maclean novels. Sure, they were formulaic, and I could usually pinpoint the “bad guy” by the third chapter, but they were fun to read.
I remember reading one book and I kept having the feeling that I had read it before, but, at the time, I was really good at remembering book covers. I knew that I had not seen the cover of this book, which meant that I had not read it. Still, the book felt really familiar. Got more than half-way through before it really started bugging me, and I took a closer look at the cover.
Of course, there was an asterisk next to the name, and footnote – on the cover – that said, “Formerly published as …”.
I’m quite confident that some sorcerers have philosophies, and some have rock collections. Maybe even magic rocks. It makes perfect sense to me, given that real sorcerers don’t even exist.
It really annoys me when e-books I have in my (Calibre) library are re-released under different names, and then the old name suddenly stops being searchable on Goodreads and Amazon and other metadata-lookup sites. Especially if the e-book has an embedded cover and title page and whatnot that refers to the original title, and I have to decide whether to change the title in the database and have it not match the file itself, or leave the original title and just update the book’s metadata by hand. This isn’t very common, but it has happened with several of the books in my library.
Even worse is what the OP describes, though, when you think you’re getting a new book, and it’s just a re-titled version of an old book. Especially since they sometimes don’t do a good job of pointing out the whole “This book was previously published as…” part. Grumble…
Not really, the real name is still there, it’s just they let a crazy person design the home video covers and the lunatic overemphasized the marketing tag line instead of the title.
Several of Jules Verne’s novel had their titles changed for publication in English. In fact, it’s even more complex than that – the novels were published in multiple volumes, and each had a title. So each Verne Novel often had more than one title in English.
This, Hector Servadac was released as To the Stars! and Off on a Comet (the latter being the English title usually given). The Steam House became The Demon of Cawnpore and Tigers and Traitors.
It can really be confusing at times. Even though it wasn’t released in multiple volumes, The Child of the Caverns was also released as Black Diamonds and Strange Doings Underground and The Underground City.
On the other hand, even though released in multiple volumes, most editions of The Mysterious Island bear only that title (the ARCO edition from the 1960s being a rare exception).
As the OP says, it’s infuriating when the title change winds up fooling the reader into thinking it’s different book. I used to run into this with Agatha Christies, which someone noted above. What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! sounds very different from 4:50 from Paddington.
Beyond that, it doesn’t bother me at all. That’s especially true of translated titles from other languages, perhaps, but in general, I don’t care. Philosopher’s Stone, Sorcerer’s Stone, makes no difference as far as I’m concerned.
When Jack Vance fans were organizing the definitive edition, Vance changed some of the names. My favorite was “Showboat World” which became “The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet” (a much better title IMHO)