Can You Trademark a Book Title

One of the questions I get asked most often is, “Hey Steve, can I trademark the name on my book?” And unfortunately, the answer is generally “No.” 

So, whether you have a book that — say, a fiction title like Payne Harrison’s “Eurostorm” or even nonfiction such as Sam Wyly’s semi-autobiography “1000 Dollars and an Idea” or Donald Miller’s book on branding called “Building a StoryBrand” or Dan Roam’s book on how to make messages more understandable called “The Back of a Napkin.”

The answer is no. Book titles by themselves cannot register its trademarks under the U.S. Trademark System. Now, interestingly, series of books with a title of a series can be trademarked. So, for example the “For Dummies” line of books, that “For Dummies” series title is eligible for trademark protection; and in fact, the “For Dummies” series is a registered trademark.

This happens to be my favorite book in the series, “Branding for Dummies.” So, I hope these examples help you out. And by the way, this isn’t the same thing as Copyright Protection. So, the content of these books and their images; their covers for example, can be protected through Copyright Protection in terms of its “artistic qualities” and again for the the content of the book itself. A related issue is, “What about song titles?” We’ll get to that in a future video.

So, if you have any questions, ask below, and I hope to see you in a future video.