A Goodreads user asked Maggie Shayne:

Why do the names of your books get changed? It seems like this happens with your books more than those by other authors.

Maggie Shayne We've changed the titles of a grand total of 7 books out of 63 novels and 26 novellas (so 89 total stories) published. That's not a lot. This happened because we got the rights back from the publishers, and because we had argued hard against the titles the publishers used. Things like "The Husband She Couldn't Remember" which we hated from the start. But the publisher insisted on it. So when we got the rights back, we gave it the title we had always given it. "Long Gone Lonesome Blues." And "That Mysterious Texas Brand Man" (seriously?) which we changed to "The Lone Cowboy." The reasons for changing are never more complicated than that we hated the publisher's title and preferred our own. We ALWAYS note the book's original title on Line 1 of the book's description on Amazon, BN, iTunes, Kobo, GooglePlay, etc, and it's also pointed out very clearly on my website. We never try to mislead readers. All but one of our title changes have been within the Brand series, btw. We also changed Forgotten Vows to the simpler and more evocative FORGOTTEN. Hope this clarifies things for you. In my opinion, when you create a work of art, be it a book, painting, sculpture, poem, invention, or anything else, you really do deserve to name it what you want, not what some giant corporation's marketing department thinks will sell. :) Hope this answers your question, and thanks so much for stopping by to post it!

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