I just Googled it, and there is an Ikea in Portland, ME. Get on it, King.
When it comes to picking a name for your novel, it's a good idea not to give it the same title as a Stephen King novel, because Stephen King is way more famous than you are. If it happens the other way around, however, that could be kind of awesome.
Brooklyn-based author Emily Schultz published her first novel eight years ago, entitled Joyland. Recently, literary giant and cash machine Stephen King put out a novel by the same name. You can imagine what happened next on places like Amazon.com: people started accidentally buying Schultz' book, particularly the e-book version.
Joette Freeland: kind of a jerk (1 star for "a little boring"?), but at least aware.
At first, Schultz was pissed because these same people would then leave angry reviews. Not that they had anyone else to blame for not reading the screen and buying the wrong product, but they were angry nonetheless, and angry people are not what you want on your Amazon reviews page. She tried to get Amazon to fix the situation, but they didn't seem to care much or respond at all.
Get a few more fog machines in there, and he'll love it.
Then, Schultz started getting royalty checks (which she described as being "for me, big") from all those dumb-dumbs buying the wrong book. Suddenly, Schultz cared a little less. She felt slightly bad about spending money meant for Stephen King, though, so she started a blog detailing where all the money was going, and whether or not she thought Mr. King would enjoy it.
Someone challenged Stephen King to write better women...and he wrote Carrie.
I am never challenging Stephen King to anything. That is terrifying.
Apparently, he's getting a kick out of the whole thing, and has decided to buy her book.
I'm sure he appreciates the return of the dozens of cents he'll receive for that book.
The moral of the story? Don't worry about the content of your novel—just pick a really catchy title and hope an author with a huge following of typo-prone fans writes something with the same name. In today's book business, that's probably not bad advice.
(by Johnny McNulty)