Whats In A Name?

[jwjohnson]

Still floating around here, although a certain John William Johnson has contacted me and informed me that he has been publishing under the name of J. W. Johnson for twenty-five years and he will take whatever action he deems necessary to protect his name. I'm not sure how I am going to handle this news. Personally, I am not egotistical enough to

Comments

[a_r_williams]

I'm kind of curious how this guy found out about you? Was he reading your blog or something? Maybe he has Google alert and your name popped up.

I know names can be protected "McDonald's", for example, but that's a registered trademark.

Check out this link:

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html

I found it using the search parameters: names and protection under copyright

[jwjohnson]

Nice link Aaron. Names as trademarks can be protected looks like. Not sure if his qualifies. I'll let someone smarter than me figure it out when it comes time to.

[jongibbs]

I know how you feel. As far as I'm aware, there are three other folks called 'Jon Gibbs' with published books out, one's a landscape photographer, one's a poet, and the third has a couple of non-fiction books on caligraphy.

Luckily, I haven't see a fiction writer called Jon Gibbs yet :)

[jwjohnson]

:-) I wonder just how much our online writing qualifies? It is published in a way. It's too late for me to "unpublish" any of my online content.

Publishing companies are smart enough to know when there might be confusion about a name and will recommend the right course of action I'm sure.

[jongibbs]

'Publishing' covers a multitude of sins. I think at the very least it might be worth googling this guy to see what he means by 'publishing for 25 years'. For all we know, he could have had a couple of poetry books out back in the mid-80s but nothing since, and now writes a weekly column for his local free newspaper.

If that's the case, he's got less right to be concerned than if, say, Scholastic currently puts out a book a year from him.

[bogwitch64]

Or you could simply publish under the name John W. Johnson, (My brother-in-law's name is John Johnson too. Ha!) which also has a nice ring to it.

A southern writer friend of mine shares her name with a (particularly cheesy) romance writer. They couldn't be more different in style or content. My friend doesn't want her name associated with the other author's work, so she dropped the initial from her byline. That's all it took.

But you're right--you have time; and a someday publisher will have the best advice to give. Choosing what name I wanted to use was one of the things I had to do when my book was published. It gets complicated.