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Q&A Do I need to change the title of my book because it is similar to the Transformers Universe?

As @Galastel mentioned, you don't legally need to change the name, so if all that you are worried about is the legal aspect you're in the clear. However, I must admit that when I saw your title, t...

posted 5y ago by Francine DeGrood Taylor‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

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#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T12:50:02Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47639
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Francine DeGrood Taylor‭ · 2019-12-08T12:50:01Z (almost 5 years ago)
As @Galastel mentioned, you don't legally need to change the name, so if all that you are worried about is the legal aspect you're in the clear.

However, I must admit that when I saw your title, the Transformers was what sprang into my head, even though I'm not a Transformers fan.

If there are no other obvious similarities in your book to the Transformers I would probably forget that first impression fairly quickly. However, if there are other similarities, readers may see you as having "copied" from the Transformer universe. They might suspect that your writing sprang from fanfic which has "had its serial number filed off", which may make people leary of the book because fanfic has gained a (not unjustified) reputation for being poorly written.

And it might not even matter if there are similarities. Humans are hard-wired to see patterns and make connections. Apophenia is the clinical term for it, I believe. Once you make a connection between two things, you are more inclined to find others.

This might not necessarily be a completely bad thing. Transformers has been a "thing" for a lot of years and fans of the universe may read your book because of your title. But if they don't get what they are expecting, there may be a backlash, which might translate into more negative reviews.

If you want to steer clear of associations with Transformers, you might want to change the name. If you don't care, keep it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-08-28T15:18:56Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 1