Books from the US and the UK often have different covers and sometimes different titles for marketing reasons. Most of the time, the title changes are for the US editions since UK books are released first. Here are some books that have title changes that I think are worth wondering about.
This is a series that have all the titles being the same except for the first book. I find this is a dumb change. I don't like Sorcerer’s Stone but at the same time I don't like Philosoher's Stone either but that always sounds better to me somehow.
This series text are changed be more Americanize for the American audience which I have always thought was silly. Are American children supposed to be believed their English is the only one in existence? There are also text changes to the story itself that might not be in the American versions but I decided to ignore that because I don't think they effect the story that much. If I have known about the difference between US and UK books, I might have read the UK versions and forget about the US versions.
The series is known as A Wells & Wong Mystery in the US while in the UK, it is known as A Murder Most Unladylike Mystery which is confusing since people can confuse them as two different series. And they also changed the titles for some of the books for the US but not all of them. If they were to change the series name, why not also change the titles of all the books to make them consistent? Why were they picky about that? For the first two books, they are retitled to Murder Is Bad Manners and Poison is Not Polite as oppose to Murder Most Unladylike and Arsenic for Tea, both title change just seems unnecessary to me.
This series, like Harry Potter, changed the text to be more Americanize for the American audience which I think seems to be a standard now though I've never noticed when reading since I don't go around thinking if they changed the text.
I didn't quite known this change until I saw both books have the same synopsis. I think the US title makes more sense since they market this as a Beauty and Beast retelling so the UK title didn't make any sense to me but I like the mystery of the title.
I like A Girl Called Owl more but I guess it's doesn't quite say much about the book. This is about Jack Frost's daughter so I supposed The Lost Frost Girl makes more sense. But I find no appeal in the title The Lost Frost Girl - this seems generic to me.
I like The Girl, The Cat & The Navigator better but maybe The Girl Who Sailed The Stars is more appealing as the other title is a bit of a mouthful. Strange that they should keep the same art for the cover.
I read North Child first and then found the book had been retitled to East. I don't really like the change but I think they changed it to match the sequel which is titled West. This is one of my favorite books but I have to say The North Child is a much better title as East just seems a bit lacking.
The change was so people won't confuse this with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I read an article about title changes referring to this particular book and one of the joke was that they supersized the title which is amusing.
I had only ever seen Murder on the Orient Express as the title so maybe the changed title aren't being used. The change was because of another book have a similar title which is a good reason for the change but Murder in the Calais Coach is just meh.
This is the first book of the His Dark Materials series. I didn't read this series so I don't know if The Golden Compass is more fitting than Northern Lights.
I don't know why they changed the title as it really is a bit confusing considering this is a series and people might mistake this for book 3 instead of 2 which I kind of did. I think Explorers on Witch Mountain sounds a lot better than The Forbidden Expedition.
Do you know any book with their titles changed? Do you think they should stop changing book titles to cater to each audience in different countries?
I agree that the title changes in Murder Most Unladylike is annoying. I think this partly because if you're looking for the books, you could think the U.S. titles are new releases or new books when they're not.
ReplyDelete-Quinley
Quinley: I think it's easy to mistake these newly titled books because how are you to know?
DeleteSorry for the late reply. I just noticed your comments when I was checking out some of my posts.
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