BY EMIL TIEDEMANN
We're just over a week past the one year mark since I published my last book, The Ultimate Alberta Bucket List: 100 Adventures to Truly Experience Alberta, which has done well (relatively speaking) and had a lot of positive feedback by folks from across the province. Why, then, would I want to change the name of my book?
Because I had to!
The new title & cover!
Right at the start of this past Thanksgiving weekend, I received an email from a publishing company. It was a cease & desist order, demanding that I immediately stop distributing my book, remove all related references and links, and unpublish it from Amazon. In other words, to make it disappear as though it never existed in the first place.
As it turns out, another author had trademarked the term "bucket list" in Canada, and so any publication with "bucket list" in its title was in violation of said trademark. I had no idea that people could even trademark such generic terms as "bucket list," let alone had any clue that my book was in violation of someone else's intellectual property. In disbelief, I checked with the Canadian Trademark Database and discovered that "bucket list" was in fact trademarked across the country.
Although my book has a different title and is nothing like this author's own books, I had no choice but to unpublish The Ultimate Alberta Bucket List, despite it being #1 in its subcategory at the time. Unfortunately, I had to give up on my 4.7-out-of-5-star rating and the kind reviews from happy customers, but I know I can work on getting those back with this new title.
I have since scrubbed my website and social media pages, redesigned a new book jacket, sent off a bunch of emails, and came up with a suitable new name that hopefully doesn't tread on someone else's trademark. In the end, I decided to rechristen the book The Ultimate Alberta Adventure Book: 100 Quests to Truly Experience Alberta, which - for the record - has the exact same content as the previous title.
If you'd like to check out The Ultimate Alberta Adventure Book, it's only available on Amazon for now, as I had to halt any sales of the old title at the local bookstores that carry it. They will be available in those stores sometime next month, just in time for Christmas! Hint, hint!
Thanks to everyone who purchased a copy of the book, old title or new; as an independent writer, I really appreciate all of your support! Happy adventures!! #AlbertaAdventures