From a legal point of view, I don't know, but as a designer, I can tell you that I would never buy a photo of books with the title and/or the author blurred. A book without a title? That's a notebook to me. I would clone out the publisher though.

To my knowledge, book titles aren't copyright.

Not only are a lot of titles copyrighted but the binding normally has the name of the publisher, which is trademarked.

You CANNOT copyright the title of a book, the name of a song, or the title of a picture/artwork. You can copyright the text, images/drawings, maps and even the design, but never the title.

If the publisher's name or logo are visible, these are brands and need to be removed.

The world of intellectual property is a minefield!

... and are those photos from IS exclusive contributors? :-P
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Gosh, I didn't check.  I'll browse again when I have a little time here. 

I think I'll review a couple of my shots and then and see what happens upon submission.  If acceptable I'll work on the rest.  The photos are actually of people and the books are just in the environment.  I'll look for publisher's marks first - but there must be 100 books in the background.    Hello PhotoShop. 

Thanks for the input. 

"The answer to the OP's question was, and still is that he should remove the titles and logos from the book spines."

Since were are closely analyzing the wording of the original question, it might be noted that the actual question was about a title on the spine, and not about a dust jacket per say.  So yingyang0 your not reading as close as you think. 

In Canadian copyright law the question of titles is directly addressed. I'm not sure about US or UK, but because they are all Rome Convention signatories, I suspect they are similar.

Moving on, there are two possibilities: Book with jacket & book without.

Generally, a title of a book is not subject matter which can be copyrighted. However it can be. Much depends on the uniqueness of the title. Section 2 of the copyright act states that a �work� includes the title thereof when such title is original and distinctive.  Simply copying the title will not be infringement unless that title is original and distinctive.  Having actually read the case law on the issue, I cant tell you that a court in Canada is very very unlikely to find infringement where only a copy of the title is made. Istock is located in Canada I believe.

However, since we are talking about taking a picture of a title on a spine, the only case for infringement is that the title itself is a work of art in its own right, and thus subject matter capable of copyright regardless of its status as a title to some other work.  I think this is what yingyang0 was getting at, albeit in a rude and slightly aggressive fashion.

It would be a hard case to make that a title on a spine - no dust jacket - could be considered a separate work that meets the test under the copyright act for protection. 

However, the dust jacket as a whole could be subject to copyright protection, because quite often they are works of art capable of standing apart from the book they are protecting.  The issue doesn't end there.  The next question would be whether photographing the spine would be the reproduction of the entire or a substantial part of the dust jacket. Its not a copy of the entire dust jacket, and its not a copy of a substantial part of the jacket either. Its not like you are folding out the entire jacket and copying the whole.

It would be extremely difficult to successfully argue infringement in this circumstance. 

I could keep going and mention such user rights under Canadian copyright as incidental use, which would provide a complete defence to a copyright infringement action. But that would be pointless...

because the real issue is that image reviewers cant be expected to understand copyright law, and microstock sites really have no choice but to be super conservative in applying IP laws.  The IP policies at the sites I post images to are garbage from a legal perspective, but from a business perspective they make sense.

The real answer is that its likely not a violation of copyright law to photograph the spine, but is violation of a policy of a business that you really have no way around.

because the real issue is that image reviewers cant be expected to understand copyright law, and microstock sites really have no choice but to be super conservative in applying IP laws.  The IP policies at the sites I post images to are garbage from a legal perspective, but from a business perspective they make sense.

One man's garbage is another man's rightly conservative, well thought out, policy created by large US law firms who specialize in IP litigation.