Would a rose with another name sell 1,000 copies?

Part 10-Titling your book

Part 10

TITLE MEETING-

Let’s backtrack in our book journey a bit. Maybe some of you are still trying to figure out problems besides the ones we’ve touched on. Maybe your book needs a title? Let’s focus on this in regards to non fiction works. Fiction titles serve a similar but distinctly different job so coming up with those types of titles is a different exercise.  

Again, we go to the questions, “Who is this book for?” “Who will buy this book?” Maybe even, “What is this book for?” Sometimes the psychology term, “felt need” is used in publishing. “What is the felt need?” of this book? In other words, what is the promise it delivers on to the reader? These are the questions we want to answer because they need to be clearly answered in your title. A good title tells you what the book is about and the sub explains it.

Let’s go searching for your title! You probably already have it somewhere stored away in your brain. Let’s look at the places your brain has been to get rolling. 

Your title or subtitle is hiding in your already written content. Let’s get your book out and read parts of it out loud alone or with your team. What are the chapter titles? One of them or a variation might be your book title. As you go through your chapter titles and you read parts of the book, make a list on a legal pad, spreadsheet, or white board of possibilities.  

You're going to end up with a word puzzle like the magnetic poetry kits you can buy for your fridge. This is a great exercise for coming up with a book title. 

Now here’s a bit of advice reeks of trying too hard to be cool but the adage that there are no bad ideas is reasonably true in a title meeting. What you don’t want is to hold back or try too hard. So make up a bad title to break the ice! That’s right, I’m saying, try to come up with a bad title. You might surprise yourself and sneak up on a winner. You want ideas flowing and pressure to be brilliant is an idea killer. 

There is an equation approach to a title as well. This is the marketing approach. Books with you in the title perform well. Books with titles that have a verb or action verb with your reader identified are engaging. Titles that fluff your ego a bit! Like say, You Are a Badass. 

Some due diligence work can also help you land a title. Get on Amazon, look at other similar books by searching books similar to your topic. Two reasons, one is to make sure you don’t steal a title and if you do, see if it's directly in your genre and when it came out. If a book is in another genre or older, then a title is fair game. A title is fair game anyway but you’ll have confusion and frustration if you name your book the same as other authors. You’re one part getting inspiration, one part figuring out you're not building a house on someone else's land. 

Come up with your keywords from your content or how you answered the “Who is this for questions,” and do a Google search with those words. Maybe there will be articles or images that strike a chord. 

Sometimes a title is surprising and the sub does all of the work. Like Girl Wash Your Face. In cases like the title is evocative, maybe surprising and the sub does the heavy lifting. The subtitle for that book is “Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be “ See how that works? 

A funny aside, Nick Tosches in his book, In the Hand of Dante riffed on publishing madness and his book Where Dead Voices Gather. The book is nonfiction and his publisher wanted him to include a subtitle so it would be clear that the book was a non fiction. His answer letter to them is a crotchety, grouchy, hilarious, curmudgeonly, tour de force. Here’s an excerpt. 

“The idea of confusion here is wrong, untenable, and idiotic. The title does not present confusion. Rather, it presents mystery, which attracts us all, even those too dumb to notice the big signs NEW NONFICTION and NEW FICTION that sadly demarcate ever bookstore in this sadly demarcated age.”

Good luck in your titling meetings!