Here are a few stories to read this Monday morning.
- The publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure books has filed a bogus trademark lawsuit against Netflix over its Bandersnatch movie.
- The Atlantic explores why 1984 isn't banned in China.
- Being in public is scary. Here are four ways you can overcome the gut-wrenching panic.
- Ilona Andrews explains why she has no books in Kindle Unlimited.
I once ran afoul of Chooseco. I published an interactive ebook (now titled Raven Noir) in which readers take on the role of C. Auguste Dupin investigating the death of Edgar Allan Poe, and I sub-titled it as a “Choose Your Own Adventure Investigation.” It was up for a while before I got an email from Amazon with the news that they had pulled it from availability because of Chooseco’s claim to the trademark for the phrase “Choose Your Own Adventure.”
Taking that phrase out of the subtitle seemed to have covered the issue.
I’m not even sure either of the two men who first developed the concept are still alive, much less still with Chooseco, but unfortunately that’s how trademark and copyright seem to work. It seems weird they could mark the entire phrase, but at least they haven’t tried to make claim to the concept of interactive storytelling itself. I don’t think they’d have filed suit if Netflix simply hadn’t used the phrase itself.
Given Bandersnatch’s reception, though, it would be interesting for Netflix to simply buy Chooseco and then get on with revolutionizing interactive streaming media. I haven’t watched Bandersnatch yet but it sounds like an interesting execution.