Publisher-Chosen Title

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When the title of a work is chosen by the publisher or someone else who is not the author, and the author may not even like the title. See also Market-Based Title.

Examples of Publisher-Chosen Title include:


Comic Books

  • The title of V for Vendetta supposedly came down from the publishers, and gave Moore and Lloyd a new impetus in crafting the graphic novel.

Film

  • The title of Field of Dreams was changed from the original book's title "Shoeless Joe." Ironically, as director Phillip Alden Robinson found out, "Shoeless Joe" in itself was the publisher's title for Bill Kinsella's novel. His title: "Dream Field."
  • The title of October Sky was chosen by a producer who came up with it by making anagrams of the book's original title "Rocket Boys". Homer Hickam doesn't seem to have minded too much, as he let the book be marketed as "October Sky" after the film was released.

Literature

  • The names of the volumes of The Lord of the Rings were not chosen by Tolkien. Tolkien never even wanted it to be a trilogy. It was originally envisioned as a six book series. Supposedly the book was broken up into three volumes because in the early 1950s, Britain had not sufficiently recovered from World War Two paper rationing to publish the whole thing at once. Thus LOTR being the Trope Maker for the whole modern idea of a "trilogy" is entirely accidental.
    • That is why which Two Towers are referred to (Orthanc, Barad Dur, Cirith Ungol, Minas Morgul, Minas Tirith - pick two) is never specified by Tolkien himself. He also rejected the name Return of the King because it... kinda spoiled the aforementioned fact, preferring War of the Ring instead.
      • Subverted in the Icelandic translation Hilmir snýr heim, which does indeed mean King comes home but in such an antiquated fashion that most first time readers don't make the connection.
  • Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. Not a name he picked or wanted, since it belonged to a short story not written by him.
    • Many of Asimov's Black Widowers stories got their titles changed on their initial magazine publication. His compilations generally change them back—with the occasional Sure Why Not.
    • His own opinion for 'worst publisher title change' though is the short story 'Strikebreaker'. Originally published with the publisher-chosen title of 'Male Strikebreaker'. (Swapping random character's genders would in no way affect the story.)
  • Donald Wollheim of Ace Books was notorious for changing titles he didn't think were "science fictional" enough, usually into something really pulpy and juvenile. A joke usually attributed to Terry Carr was that if Ace under Wollheim were ever to put out a copy of the Bible, it would be a double-sided cover called "War God of Israel" [1] and "The Thing with Three Souls."
  • Horace Gold of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine thought that most of Cordwainer Smith's original titles were bland. His solution was to take new titles from the text, e.g. "Think Blue, Count Two". The technique worked very well, and Smith didn't change any of the titles back.
    • Actually, this was Fred Pohl, as stated in his introduction to "The Instrumentality of Mankind" (having just looked it up)
  • And then, of course, there's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
    • Definitely Cultural Translation as it has the real original name in the rest of the world. A very bad look for America (we of course get the American version of everything here in NZ, not the original, though the genuine version was also sold here, and we were told the title change was because Americans wouldn't understand!
    • It was more "American children would be scared off by the term 'philosophy'" than "Americans wouldn't understand what the title meant."
    • The weirdest part is that the term is meant to be obscure so most readers don't recognize it, and so is spelled out in the text anyway.
  • David Eddings wasn't thrilled with his publisher putting a Chess Motif in the titles of the Belgariad. If he'd had his way, the last book would have gotten the title In the Tomb of the One-Eyed King instead of Enchanter's Endgame - Your Mileage May Vary on whether that would be lame or totally metal.
  • When C. J. Cherryh's publisher asked her for the title of the third book in her Chanur Saga, she jokingly replied "The Kif Strike Back". The publisher took her seriously, and the title stuck.
  • Philip K. Dick is an odd case; for the most part, the titles of his stories remained untouched, but the names were often changed when they were adapted; for example, the short story "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" became the film Total Recall. He admitted, though, that even he didn't think the original titles were very good.
  • The first Repairman Jack novel by F. Paul Wilson was called The Tomb by the publisher who wanted people to think it was a sequel to his earlier horror book, The Keep. No actual tomb appears in the story. (Ironically, Wilson later decided to link the two books in a series.)
  • Stephen King's The Shining should have been The Shine, but the publisher told him that "shine" was also a slang term for a Negro ("shoe shine boy"), and that, since a minor character in the book was an African American, it could have had some Unfortunate Implications.
  • Stephenie Meyer's original name for Twilight was Forks. Her agent made her change it, and most people would probably agree with her that Forks is not a great name for a paranormal romance.
  • The sixth book in the Warrior Cats subseries Power of Three was originally going to be called "Cruel Season", but the publishers thought it was too depressing and changed it to "Sunrise".
  • Animorphs titles were all publisher chosen
  • Almost anything published by TSR/Wizards of the Coast. As mentioned by Elaine Cunningham who worked with them, in some cases it's a good idea, since there are authors great at making text itself, but terrible at naming the result. (Aside of her, they had at least one brilliant game designer bad at naming stuff).

Newspaper Comics

  • Peanuts was named by the syndicate. Charles M. Schulz hated the name.
    • Given that his choice was "Li'l Folks", the Syndicate clearly did him a favor, even if he didn't appreciate it.
    • "Peanuts" is a Word Salad Title (despite being only one word). Someone at the syndicate was under the impression that it was another word for "kids", because of the term "peanut gallery".
  • The Far Side was descended from a similarly warped gag comic called Nature's Way. Gary Larson didn't mind the change at all - "They could have called it Revenge of the Zucchini People for all I cared".
  • Newspaper publisher Joseph Patterson was famous for his "hands-on" management of comic strips, including choosing the titles such as Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates. One story is that Milton Caniff was a bit baffled when Patterson chose this latter for the title of his new comic strip, because initially he hadn't planned to include any character named "Terry", and also hadn't planned to include any pirates.

Music

  • Russian classical music example: In the beginning of the 19th century, composer Mikhail Glinka wrote his famous opera "Ivan Susanin", about the eponymous Russian hero who sacrificed his life to save Russia from Polish invasion. But censors forced Glinka to change the opera's name to "Life for the Tsar". In the Soviet times, the originally intended name was restored.
  • The albums Paranoid and Vol 4 by Black Sabbath were originally called War Pigs and Snowblind respectively. The record company changed the name of both before releasing them, the first to avoid offending people involved in the Vietnam War and to capitalise on the single's popularity, and the second because of the drug reference.
  • Megadeth's The System Has Failed was intended as a Dave Mustaine solo album but the label put the name Megadeth on there instead of his name because they thought it would sell more copies. They were right.

Other

  • This is general practice in news magazines. The writer writes the text, but has absolutely no control over the article's actual title, or the pictures that accompany it and their placement, which are all decided by the editor. This leads to the occasional instance where an editor who is Completely Missing the Point gives an article a misleading, inappropriate title or images which completely undermine the actual writing.

Theatre

  • Ayn Rand titled her first play Penthouse Legend, but producers first renamed it Woman on Trial and then Night of January 16th.

Video Games

  1. ↑ Or possibly "Master of Chaos"
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