Prisimpad: A Guide to Wattpad, Writing, and Whatever

ON WHATEVER: Creating and Protecting your Brand

Another topic came to mind today, spawning from the current whirlwind (at the time of my posting this) of drama going on in the writing world over the trademark of a single word. Because I don't want this post to come off as slanderous, or attacking the author in question, I'm going to change the word to something equally as common once I get to talking specifics and leave out any names.

The gist of the drama is the author trademarked a very common word that lots of books and people use. Now the author is going after every author who uses that word in their book title within the same genre. This has everyone in the writing community up in arms.

Where the author screwed up isn't because they decided to protect their brand as the author claims. Where the author screwed up is trademarking a single, common, used all the time, word. That is why people are upset. The trademark is on the wrong thing. Not the series name, but a single word used within the book name. That's it. That's where the author screwed the pooch. Now Amazon, because as it stands now the trademark is legal, is being forced to remove books that use that word in the title. It's not Amazons fault. All they know is there's a trademark in place and it's a valid trademark so they're forced to comply. However, recently a huge advocate for writers in that genre has officially challenged the trademark so Amazon is working with them to temporarily stop pulling books until the matter is resolved.

Here's why this situation is ridiculous.

Let's say I wrote The Dangerous Cycle. It consists of five books all of which have dangerous in the title. I decided that I want to protect my brand because other books in the same genre of my books are popping up using Dangerous in their book title. So I get nervous other people might start mistaking these new books for mine. Protecting a brand is fine. I can trademark "The Dangerous Cycle" and it be perfectly acceptable.

What I shouldn't do is trademark just dangerous.

It's okay to want to protect your brand. This is your livelihood, but this isn't the brand that was trademarked. The brand is "The Dangerous Cycle" not "dangerous." The word dangerous is used daily, you can't own that word! So don't try to own that word. It sets a very bad precedence. Hell, if I wanted to trademark Draygon from my Draygon books, that's fair game. Draygon (to the best of my knowledge) is made up. It's something I created specific to my books. Draygon isn't as common as dangerous so it would be fair game to trademark if I really decided that was going to be my brand. But don't do a common word.

It would be like JK Rowling trademarking just Harry instead of Harry Potter. Do you know how many people have the name of Harry out there? Or Stephen King trademarking IT. Could you imagine never being able to use the word "it" in a book title ever again? Now as it stands now you probably don't want to have a book with just "it" in the title, but you can have the word in there.

If your published books get popular enough to need trademarking, then by all means protect your brand. Trademark your author name, trademark a series name, trademark that made up word that is uniquely yours, all of those are more than welcome. But don't trademark a single word that everyone can use that isn't unique to your book or theirs. Don't claim a common word or phrase as your own.

Now what you can do is trademark the stylized use of that word, which the author did as well. Meaning if I had dangerous written in a specific font, I could trademark that so nobody else could copy how dangerous looks, but the word in general is fair game. However, this is where the author screwed up a second time. Make sure the font license allows trademarking/copyright. This author trademarked both the use of the word and the stylized version. . .but the license of the font used doesn't allow that. If you buy a font or get a free font, make sure the rules allow you to trademark in that font. If it doesn't, don't trademark anything using that font.

This has been an ugly situation all around to watch unfold, both because of how the author has handled it and because of how some of the writing community has handled it. Lots of attacks handed out all around, many that tote the line of flat out harassment. But it's an important lesson for a lot of aspiring authors to pay attention to. Protect yourself, but make sure you're protecting it the right way.

Had this author trademarked "The Whatever Series" they would've been fine, instead they go after a single, common word and attack other authors for using it. That is the quickest way to sink your brand. They even attacked an author for using a same character name in a book which was another common character name and not unique to their book.

Lots of people have similar book title names. There is nothing illegal or wrong about people having the same book title. So before you freak out over books having similar titles or the same title, please stop and think for a second. What truly is your brand? Is it just a single word? Or is it something more?

I don't know how this situation is going to end. Already a retired lawyer has applied for dismissal of the trademark, that group I mentioned has put in a formal complaint with Amazon and are consulting their lawyers over the next course of action. . . .basically the war is just getting started. I suspect the trademark will get tossed out and all will be right in the world. But the damage on this authors career could be irrevocable both because of how they handled the situation and how people are attacking like a pack of animals.

No matter what, it's an important situation to keep an eye on because however it ends up it could change the game.