A story about titles

I spotted a thread about Susan Johnson on the Amazon romance board, and it reminded me of something kind of odd that happened while I was still writing for Bantam. I was working on Love Remembered, and my editor suggested we retitle it to Temporary Mistress. An author writing for a traditional publisher has no real control over titles, of course, but I pointed out that there was no mistress, temporary or otherwise, in the book. Even so, she continued to push for that title. (I'm guessing the marketing department liked the title.). In fact, Bantam liked the title so much that they informed Amazon and other sites that my next book would be titled Temporary Mistress-- if you Google that title and my name, you can find quite a few hits.

When Bantam dropped me, however, they switched that title over to a Susan Johnson book. I guess the marketing department liked the title so much they were bound and determined to use it somewhere. I've never read the Johnson book, but I do hope there's a mistress in it somewhere:-).