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Here's What's Vital For Your Title
Your book title can make or break your book. Pick the wrong title, and your otherwise transcendent book could tank.
Read that again.
The title doesn’t need to be perfect, but it’s important that you avoid the pitfalls many authors commit.
Here are five tips to help create the best title for your book.
Tip #1. The title should be memorable.
That means it must be understandable. This is where Shawshank Redemption fell short. Shawshank? What’s a Shawshank? Sounds like a weapon an inmate
might use to stab a prison guard.
And only half of everyone I know understands what “redemption” means.
A few months ago, Reedsy asked their community of 200,000 readers to vote for the most revelatory nonfiction books of all time. Three of the top ten include:
- How to Survive a Plague
- The Art of Cruelty
- How to Do Nothing
In light of the covid epidemic, I’m sure all of us would like to know how to survive the next plague. And the title gets right to the point.
Tip #2. The title should be easily repeatable.
If the title is hard to say, it’s hard to remember. Try
saying it three times as fast as you can. If you keep tripping over the words, change it.
Tip #3. The title must hook your audience.
The role of a hook is to generate your readers’ attention. That’s it.
Take,
for example, the book How to Do Nothing mentioned above. That title hooks me because it tells readers they’re going to learn how to do nothing. Isn’t that a contradiction? I thought so, but I might be wrong—and that compels me to read the book.
Tip #4. The title should be short.
Remember the book The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds? The Pulitzer Prize-winning title worked sixty years ago, but it won’t work now—except when you’re playing charades. No one can act
it out in under a minute!
Try to limit your title to three words or less. For example, current bestsellers include the following:
- Be Useful
- Fourth
Wing
- Wildfire
- Holly
- Judgement Prey
- Bloodlines
- Enough
- Elon Musk
Some books have longer titles, but the
vast majority keep it to fewer than three words.
Remember, when a reader logs on to the evil empire Amazon to purchase a book, they're looking at a book cover the size of a thumbnail, at
best.
Here's a rule of thumb for your title and your book cover:
*The shorter the title, the larger the font size.
*The longer the title, the smaller the font size.
THE most important element of your front cover isn't the pretty artwork or the color scheme. It's the title.
Keep it short.
Tip #5 The subtitle defines your audience
This applies to nonfiction...
Let’s go back to Be Useful, by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The subtitle gets right to the point: Seven
Tools For Life.
Who’s the audience? Anyone looking for tools to become more useful.
Earlier this week, I ran across the book and I immediately downloaded it to my Kindle. Strong title! Strong subtitle! Written by a celebrity. It’s no surprise the book is a #1 New York Times Bestseller.
One Final Word About Your Book Title
Know what’s the missing piece to
creating the right book title? A team of professionals intent on helping you sell books.
And that’s what we do.
Our team is committed to positioning your book so it sells. Lisa Hawker, our Book Cover Coordinator, will work with you to land the right title and subtitle. Then she brings it to our team meeting where we evaluate it together.
Click here to schedule a meeting with me
where we'll explore the possibilities of your book.
Before I let you go, I want to heartily congratulate Don Owsley on the release of his new book.
