Is imitation the highest form of flattery?

Charles Caleb Colton (1780–1832) was an English cleric, writer and collector, well known for his eccentricities. One of his most famous quotes was published in 1824 in Lacon: or, Many things in few words:

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.

I got to thinking about this when I heard about some confusion that has occurred over the recently published book by Michael Wolff:

It turns out that there was a book with the same title published in 2009:

 

Mr. Wolff’s book sold out so quickly on Amazon that many people, not realizing they were not ordering the book they had intended, ordered Mr. Hansen’s book.

Not surprisingly, there are many books that share titles. Sometimes titles differ by the use of “the” or “a” but I have included only those that are precisely the same. Here are just a few:

Title	Author 1 (year published)	Author 2 (year published)
Life After Life	Jill McCorkle (1995)	Kate Atkinson (2013)
Forever	Judy Blume (1975)	Pete Hamill (2003)
A Person of Interest	Theresa Schwegel (2007)	Susan Choi (2008)
Great Expectations	Charles Dickens (1861)	Kathie Acker (1982)
The Double	Fyodor Dostoevsky (1846)	José Saramago (2002)
The Cave	Tim Krabbé (2000)	José Saramago (2003)

Amazon lists over 1,800,000 titles for sale, so it is no surprise that there are many duplicates! There is a new book listed on Amazon every 5 minutes, which corresponds to over 100,000 books every year. It would probably be nearly impossible for authors to come up with unique titles for every book being written.

Having said all that, for those of you kind friends who have repeatedly suggested that I try to publish this blog, you can see that the market is a bit overwhelming!

Happy reading!

Love,

Rebecca