WooCommerce - Dash in product title breaks loop - wordpress

Question

So I'm running this query:
// find books that have this author
$author_name = get_the_title();
// args
$booksby_args = array(
'post_type' => 'product',
'post_status' => 'any',
'posts_per_page' => -1,
'orderby' => 'title',
'order' => 'ASC',
'tax_query' => array(
array(
'taxonomy' => 'pa_author-woo',
'terms' => $author_name,
'field' => 'name'
),
),
);
// The Query
$thebooks_query = new WP_Query( $booksby_args );
// The Loop
if ( $thebooks_query->have_posts() ) {
echo '<h3>Books by '.$author_name.'</h3>';
echo '<ul class="author-entry__book-list">';
while ( $thebooks_query->have_posts() ) {
$thebooks_query->the_post();
$productObj = get_page_by_title( get_the_title(), OBJECT, 'product' );
$productId = $productObj->ID;
$wc_product = wc_get_product( $productId );
echo '<li class="clearfix">';
echo '<a href="'.get_permalink( $productId ).'">';
echo the_post_thumbnail('shop_thumbnail');
echo '<div class="author-entry__book-info">';
echo '<p class="title">'.get_the_title().'</p>';
echo '<p class="price">'.$wc_product->get_price_html().'</p>';
echo '</div>';
echo '</a>';
echo '</li>';
}
echo '</ul>';
}
But whenever the title of a product contains a '-', the output just seems to fail after it's echo'ed the title. There's not even an empty <p class="price"> tag. Other elements lower down my template don't get outputted either.
Also, if I try define define a variable for the price, e.g. $wc_price = $wc_product->get_price_html() before all the echo statements, none of the echos render at all!
If I comment out the price echo or if the product title doesn't contain a dash, It all works just fine.
This is a snippet of what it outputs when it fails:
<div class="author-entry__book-info">
<p class="title">Rogue – The Inside Story Of SARS’s Elite Crime-busting Unit</p>
</div>
Help me understand please!