A Sticker's Worth a Thousand Words

I admit that I fell for Tin House's marketing. The email header read: NEWS FLASH! and I opened it. Seems Tin House Books had to delay release of an upcoming book because they have to sticker over the old title. From the press release:

Our anticipated publication of artist/provocateur Zak Smith’s visual homage to Thomas Pynchon’s seminal novel Gravity’s Rainbow has been slightly delayed.

In an unfortunate turn of events, Pynchon’s publisher, Penguin USA, believing the book’s original title, Gravity’s Rainbow Illustrated: One Picture for Every Page, was misleading, demanded Tin House Books change the title or face a lawsuit.

Smith’s book will now be known as Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow, the title of the original series of artwork showcased at the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

As much as I'd rather not, I agree with Goliath here that the original title is misleading. The whole likelihood of confusion thing, you know. I wonder what the intellectual property law scholars would say, though.  At any rate, here's hoping that the little brouhaha will help sales for Tin House!

Comments

[andrew s.]

Any questions of confusion aside, the new (old?) title is really vastly superior! But, I've already run into the confusion first-hand while trying to help the nice bookseller at a large corporate book chain look up if they were going to get copies in (after we got past "how is gravities spelled?" and "there's nothing listed under 'gravity's rainbows'", anyway).