JACKY WILSON SAID

I’ve had a reply to my letter from the children’s laureate, who sees no reason to change her title. The gist of her argument is that she wasn’t aware of my book and, anyway, the publishers chose the title, not her. They say they didn’t know about my book either. I’m told that, unlike most authors I know, Random House don’t use Amazon to check titles before publishing a book.

My case for asking that JW change her title is evidently weakened by the fact that there are other novels called Love Lessons. I can find just one, an adult romance only published in the USA, after mine, on a different subject. But, as I state in the entry below, there’s no copyright in titles and she’s within her rights to call her book whatever she or her publishers want to call it.

I have no inclination to take on the country’s biggest publisher over this. We’re not talking world poverty, here, just a title. I’ve done what I could, through the proper channels, to protect the status of the novel that many readers think is my best. The last fortnight has left me in an invidious position, not of my choosing, one that could easily damage me if I get further embroiled in it. So I’m going to take this on the chin and move on, taking my counsel from a poem by a recent Nobel laureate: whatever you say, say nothing.