Oh Bu**er!

It was always possible, but I thought I'd done enough to deter someone using the same title.

I had an idea for a title for the series of children's books I am working on. I set up the website with a holding page to keep both the .co.uk and .com web addresses away from others. I set up a Facebook page knowing that anyone searching to see if there was anything out there with the same title, they would hopefully be deterred from using it.

Unfortunately, it would seem all that was to no avail. Personal circumstances have delayed the completion of my first novel and in the meantime someone else has published using the same title I had come up with. 

The story is very different although also features a dog, the covers could not be more different and the style of writing is quite different...

BUT...

I cannot help but feel very disappointed. Having searched the internet to ensure I was not duplicating a title, as recommended by various writing sites, to have this happen is really, well, disappointing.

It IS possible someone else came up with the same title, purely through creativity, it is possible someone landed on my website and as my book was not yet published, decided to use it. I'll never know. Maybe they haven't done the same research into the publishing scene and taken on the same thought process. 

What is sure is that I cannot change what has happened, and so time for a brainstorming session. I still have the domain names and websites, but these days more and more people rely on Facebook and so that may not be an issue for this other writer.

I now need to move on and find a new series name, have the book cover re-designed...

... and get the book finished, published and out there.

Personal issues? Move over, they will have to take a back seat... I have a goal and I have a plan.

Now all I need is a title!

Certificate of Completion

In answer to a recent query asking if the writing course is accredited, please see the logo at the bottom left corner,   IAO and check out their website

 http://www.iao.org/lp/academicaccreditation/about-us.asp  for further information.

Being ruthless...

I have decided it really is time to be ruthless with my collection of books, mainly paperbacks but a number of hardbacks too. I love books. Don't get me wrong, I love my Kindle too, but there is something about a room with lots of shelves filled with lots of books. Maybe in a former life I was a Librarian, that would have been seriously fitting to my love of books. 

I would spend hours browsing in a bookstore, moving from section to section trying to work out whether I was in the mood for a Thriller, or a Romance, whether I wanted fact or fiction. Someone's life story or a Fantasy novel to whisk me away for a few hours. I would buy books as I found them, storing them safely on my bookcase for later. I have unread books that will soon be celebrating their 10th anniversary.

I have lost count of the number of times I have packed my books into cardboard boxes to move from one house to another, one country to another, the weight alone telling of the amount of trees I am responsible for no longer growing in the forests.

I am about to move house again and I refuse to carry this volume of books once more, so today I decided I would look at options for reducing the number on my shelves. I have vowed to only take one bookcase with me. 5 shelves is all I will have. I have already promised the other bookcases to other homes, I am committed to being ruthless...

There are a number of options available to me. I could give them to a charity shop, but a few I have asked don't really want them, they have plenty already and don't have room to store them. I know if I asked further afield I would find someone to take them, but I thought I would see what other options are available to me. I wondered about finding a 2nd hand book shop who may buy them from me in bulk. There are the websites that you can sell books, dvd's etc and among these I found www.greenmetropolis.com an online charity bookstore. I decided to fetch a few from my bookshelf, pop the ISBN numbers into the various websites and see what came back.

As anyone who reads books knows, the ISBN is on the back cover. So is the blurb about the book.

And that's where the problem began. As I looked at the small pile of 6 books I had chosen at random, I realised not one of them had been read, the spines were perfect, the pages were pristine. I turned the first one over and began to read to synopsis... and actually, it sounded pretty good, so I decided I would hang on to it to read at some later date, and moved on to the next one which also sounded good enough to hang on to.

Several minutes later all 6 books were back on the shelf to be kept for a later date and I was pulling the large dictionary from the shelf to check the meaning of the word 'ruthless'.