Book titles are tough. Even the greats don’t always get them right.
by Anne R. Allen
Book titles are so important. Would the novels Trimalchio in West Egg, First Impressions, or Private Flemming, His Various Battles have succeeded if their publishers hadn’t changed the titles to The Great Gatsby, Pride and Prejudice, and The Red Badge of Courage before publication?” We’ll never know. But I think most of us will agree the publishers improved on the originals.
Recently Alex Limberg at the blog “Ride the Pen” asked a bunch of author-bloggers how we come up with our titles. Unfortunately, I had no magic formula to give him. Here’s what I said.
“I have a journal full of lines of poetry and quotes I think might make possible titles. Often one is my inspiration to start a new piece. But the quote almost never ends up as the final title.
That’s because once a story is finished, I usually realize it’s about something else entirely. So I write a new title, sometimes a phrase from the work. Then I Google it and discover 27 other authors have beat me to it. So I change a few words. Agonize. Change a few more. Sometimes I go back to the journal and find the perfect title has been there all along.”
Getting book titles right is even tougher in the digital age.
These days, we have to consider a lot more than how grabby a title looks on a bookstore shelf. We have to think in terms of SEO, keywords, categories, and also-boughts as we fight for visibility in the ever-expanding digital marketplace.
Traditionally authors have been warned by agents and editors not to be “married” to their titles because publishers regularly change titles based on marketing strategies and other factors that seem to have little to do with the story.
In the digital age, we can change titles after publication, especially if a book is self-published, but don’t make changes lightly.
Jami Gold has a great post this week on changing a major aspect of a published book.
She mentions the fact you’ll create confusion for your established readers if you change a title.
Another problem to think about is that you may lose all your reader reviews, because retailers may see it as a new book. Also, older entries come up first in a Google search, so your old title will be with you forever on a SERP.
But as I said, title dilemmas are not a new problem. It’s amazing how many classics had to go through a title make-over before they achieved success.
Here are some examples of book titles that were changed before publication
- Jacqueline Susann’s They Don’t Build Statues to Businessmen became Valley of the Dolls
- Rick Moody’s F.F. became The Ice Storm.
- George Orwell’s The Last Man in Europe became 1984
- William Golding’s Strangers from Within became Lord of the Flies.
- Carson McCullers The Mute became The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
- Ernest Hemingway’s Fiesta became The Sun Also Rises.
- Evelyn Waugh’s The House of the Faith became Brideshead Revisited.
- Alex Haley’s Before This Anger became Roots: The Saga of an American Family.
- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s At this Point in Time became All the President’s Men.
Obviously authors don’t always make the best choices in titling our own work.
But I do know some authors have had heartbreakingly bad titles inflicted on them as well. I’m not saying the publisher is always right.
If you’re planning to self publish, do get lots of editorial and reader feedback before settling on a title.
Here are some tips for choosing that perfect title:
1) Google Your Possible Book Titles
You can’t copyright a book title, and there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with choosing a title that’s already in use. Publishers have been recycling titles for centuries. Sometimes oldies but goodies work better than originals. In fact, some mass market lines regularly reuse titles they know work well.
But a recycled title can work against you, so make sure you do a search on your title idea before you decide to go with it—and go through several pages of results.
Calling your book To Kill a Mockingbird or Gone with the Wind is perfectly legal, but it’s going to disappoint a lot of readers and set you up for some unpleasant comparisons.
And you really don’t want to use a title if it’s been previously used for a very different genre or something you don’t want your name connected with.
Behind the Green Door might sound like a lovely title for a children’s book about a garden with a door covered with moss, but a quick Google search will tell you that’s the title of an infamous porn film from the 1970s.
It’s not illegal to use it, but very unwise for a children’s book.
Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do if somebody chooses your title after your book comes out. When my comedy, The Best Revenge, debuted in 2005, there were only two books with similar titles. Now there are dozens. I have thought of changing it, but it’s so perfect for a book about a woman who writes a newspaper column called “Living Well” that I can’t give it up.
2) Book Titles That Don’t Work
Have you heard about a book from a friend and thought, “meh, that doesn’t sound like it’s worth my time”? Often that feeling comes from an uninspiring title.
Less than exciting book titles can be:
- too short
- too long
- generic
- uninformative
- wrong for the genre
- an appeal to the wrong audience
- unintentionally comical
As an example of the latter, I remember an American’s thriller manuscript that came into the UK publishing house where I worked. It had the title A Passing Wind. The whole staff went into giggling fits.
North Americans, “passing wind” is what the Brits politely call farting. 🙂
Generic book titles can work against you
All-encompassing phrases like Love and Hope, Love is Forever, Living my Life, or Making Choices tend to sound amateurish because they don’t tell the reader anything about the story and don’t indicate genre. Broad topics can also sound grandiose.
And if you take on a huge subject like War and Peace, you’d better have the writing chops to go nose-to-nose with Leo Tolstoy.
One-word book titles can have impact, but…
One-word titles can look great on a cover, but they can fall flat unless they are the name of a unique, fascinating character or you choose a really hooky, precise word like Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere or Louis Sachar’s Holes.
Bill Morris wrote a great post at The Millions a few years ago about the appeals and perils of one-word titles.
Big, all-encompassing words like “Hope,” “Loneliness,” “Lovers,” or “Dreams” are usually too unfocused to work in a title. They tell the reader nothing except that either you think you’re famous enough that your name alone sells a book, or you’re an amateur biting off more than you can chew.
Long book titles make your cover designer cry.
Long titles can present issues unless they’re used for comic effect, like Ally Carter’s I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You. They also pose problems with marketing because they often get truncated.
And your cover designer will be muttering rude words and curses. There’s no room left for anything fun. And a thumbnail of your cover may look like a jumble of chicken scratches–a disaster in the digital age.
Long titles often red-flag a newbie. I don’t think a lot of people would buy the following (seriously, I had editing clients with book titles almost this bad.)
- My Life as a Railroad Brakeman and Ladies’ Underwear Salesman in America’s Heartland in the 1950s before the Country was Overrun by Those People
- Why my Son is Going to Hell along with his Whiny Wife and their Ungrateful, Ugly Children: You Call That a Mother’s Day Gift?
- 101 Crafts to Make from Dryer Lint When Your Slimeball Husband Leaves you Destitute and Runs off with a Bimbo Named Tiffany.
Anything that says, “this book is all about me and my unresolved issues” is probably not going to sell all that well.
3) Study Titles that Work
According to studies, two to four word titles work best for books.
Titles for online pieces for web journals and blogs can be longer. The sweet spot for blogpost titles is six to eight words.
Here are some title categories that are “tried and true.”
The hero’s name
This is the oldest type of title in the book, literally. A title simply stating the name of the protagonist has been around since the birth of the novel. Names made up the most common titles in early fiction. From Don Quixote, Tom Jones, Robinson Crusoe, David Copperfield, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Madam Bovary, Mrs. Dalloway, and Auntie Mame, to Olive Kitteridge and Coraline, the protagonist’s name can be a pretty safe choice for a title.
Then there are protagonist’s names with embellishments like The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Bridget Jones’ Diary, and The Talented Mr. Ripley
The antagonist’s name
Sometimes the villain gets top billing, as with Moby Dick, Hannibal, Jaws, Maleficent and Lady Susan.
Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is one of the most clever villain titles, because even though Rebecca DeWinter is dead, she casts a shadow over the entire story. The fact the main character has no name but “the second Mrs. DeWinter” makes this title all the more compelling.
The main character’s occupation
The Master Builder, The Sot Weed Factor, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Master and Commander, The Continental Op, Gladiator.
An important character’s gender
The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Girls are very popular right now. And 538 thinks “Girl” titles may have peaked) The Third Man, The Thin Man, The Man Who Fell to Earth, The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Boys from Syracuse, The Woman in White.
A family member’s occupation or title
The Mermaid’s Sister, The Duke’s Children, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Father of the Bride, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, The Baker’s Daughter, The Unicorn’s Daughter, The Bonesetter’s Daughter. (Daughters are very big, too.)
Edit: This caveat just in from a reader: watch out for the word “Daddy.” That can set off the porn filters and suggest your book is incest erotica and get you banned. “Stepbrother” and even “boy” are apparently dangerous too.
Setting is good
Mansfield Park, The Country of the Pointed Firs, Brokeback Mountain, Wuthering Heights, Cold Mountain, Mystic River, Echo Park, Dune, Tinseltown, Telegraph Avenue.
These let readers know where the story happens—which helps them decide if they want to go there. Remember you want your title and cover to give as much information as possible to your potential reader without confusing or overwhelming them.
Or use the setting with embellishments
The Amityville Horror, Murders on the Rue Morgue, The Last Time I Saw Paris, The Incident at Owl Creek Bridge, The Bridges of Madison County.
The main character’s place of origin
The Virginian, Bastard Out of Carolina, The Man from Snowy River.
The main event or inciting incident
The Hunger Games, The Great Train Robbery, Escape from Alcatraz, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Death of Ivan Ilyich….(or practically anybody).
“Main event” titles are informative and contain the hook, so they’re great choices.
Theme
These advertise the book’s big picture: Pride and Prejudice, Of Mice and Men, War and Peace, The Beautiful and the Damned. These are especially good for literary fiction.
Quotes from the Bible, nursery rhymes or the classics
A Time to Kill, The Sun Also Rises, Blithe Spirit, Along Came a Spider, Tender is the Night, Infinite Jest, His Dark Materials
In fact there are so many from classic literature they have their own Wikipedia page.
Quotes from songs or song titles
Catcher in the Rye, Go Down Moses, Sometimes a Great Notion, and most of Mary Higgins Clark’s oeuvre from While My Pretty One Sleeps (1990) to I’ve Got You Under My Skin (2014)
NOTE: If you take a line from a song rather than the title, make sure it’s in the public domain. Song titles can’t be copyrighted, but quoting even one line from a copyrighted song can cost you big bux.
Lines from the work itself
The Silence of the Lambs is a reference to Clarice being traumatized in childhood by screaming lambs. To Kill a Mockingbird also comes from the book’s dialogue, as do Gone with the Wind and Waiting to Exhale. I did this with my title, The Gatsby Game. The anti-hero Alistair refers to his social climbing as “playing the Gatsby game.”
4) Use Keywords to Match your Title to your Genre
Authors can run into real trouble if a title sets up the wrong expectations in a reader, so it’s wise to keep keywords in mind, especially for genre fiction.
You’ll really confuse people if you title your literary novel Her Secret Billionaire Lover, call a cozy mystery Blood of the Demon, or name a gritty thriller The Blueberry Muffin Mystery.
Browse bookstore sections or Amazon bestseller lists to find common keywords.
- Romance titles tend to use words “love” and “romance” and “heart” a lot. Regencies feature a lot of dukes and other aristocrats, and contemporaries have their modern equivalent, billionaires. Other common romance keywords are “kiss”, “rake”, “seduction”, “duke”, “bride”, “wedding”, “rogue”, and “wild”. Just browse the Romance books on Amazon for the most common.
- Mystery titles vary depending on whether they’re cozy, noir, or gritty. A whole lot of cozies have puns in the titles these days, often involving food, like Assault and Pepper or Flourless to Stop Him.
- Darker mysteries use words like “body”, “shadows”, “dead”, “dark”, “farewell”, “murder”, “kill” and “corpse.”
- Westerns and Western Romance identify themselves with words like “cowboy”, “boots”, “rider”, “sagebrush”, “lonesome”, and “trail”.
- Paranormals tend to do a lot with “blood”, “demon”, “night” and “dead,” and “howl.”
- Space Operas often use “stars”, “space” and “alien”, and “empire”.
- Fantasy is probably going to have “swords”, “sorcery”, “wizard”, “mage”, “dragon”, king”, or “magic” in there somewhere.
I’m not saying you must use keywords—I know the cliché aspect can be off-putting—but you need be especially wary of using the wrong keyword for your genre.
What you’re looking for is something that’s hooky and pinpoints your genre while offering something unique. (I did say it isn’t easy.)
5) Put a Hook in the Title
Hooky titles are more important than ever in these days when so many more titles are competing for a reader’s attention. A hook is something that presents a question or piques curiosity.
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- The Way We Live Now (Do we live differently now? How?)
- The DaVinci Code (I’ve heard of DaVinci, but not his code: what is it?)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (That one made me grab it before I even knew what it was about. That’s an example of a longer title that works.)
- And a lot of people have wanted to know what was so great about Gatsby.
6) Use Specifics Rather than Broad, Poetic Strokes
The kind of title that worked for a big novel a century ago may leave today’s reader cold. People want instant information about the book’s content.
Tom Corson-Knowles of TCK Publishing gives an example of a book called Pen, Pencil and Poison that didn’t sell well until its title was changed to The Story of a Notorious Criminal.
I know—the first one is clever and represents better writing, but apparently “notorious criminal” sells better than pretty words.
Norah Ephron’s memoir about aging, I Feel Bad About My Neck was a megaseller. But a book titled “A Woman of a Certain Age” probably wouldn’t sell so well (especially without Ms. Ephron’s name attached) even though it’s more poetic.
7) Use Simple Words
You also do better with simple words rather than ones people have to look up—or ones you’ve made up yourself.
I have to admit I resisted the novel Quincunx for years even though lots of friends recommended it. I didn’t know what a quincunx was and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If it had been called Dark, Twisted Victorian Families, I might have been more eager to pick it up.
Lots of Fantasy writers make up stuff with their world building, but make sure people can pronounce the words you put in the title. It’s hard to go to the bookstore and ask for The Sword of Mzplyxan or the Death of the Vrypyttrx.
8) Analyze Possible Book Titles
Lulu has a title analyzer that purports to tell you the likelihood a title will become a bestseller. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it may help you decide among several possibilities.
I did a little test putting in I Feel Bad About My Neck compared with the generic His Sweet Kisses, and “Neck” scored only a 21% chance and “Sweet Kisses” scored 61%. So use it with several grains of salt.
9) Don’t Treat Nonfiction Book Titles like Narrative Titles
A lot of advice on book titles lumps together fiction and nonfiction, but nonfiction titles serve a different purpose. They don’t have to stimulate the imagination like a novel or memoir title—instead, they need to grab attention and promise to fulfill a need.
This makes keywords essential for nonfiction book titles. And old-fashioned title like “What Color is your Parachute” does not work in today’s search-engine driven world. Titles require subtitles that contain keywords now. So the 2015 version of What Color is Your Parachute has the subtitle “2015: a Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career Changes.”
If you blog, you probably know something about what blog titles get you the most clicks. The same goes for nonfiction book titles. Numbers and lists work well. So do how-tos, questions and answers to questions. Shocking statements do too, like “Why you Should Never…” and “What you Don’t Know About…”
What works best for nonfiction is a short, standout title that grabs the reader’s attention, and a longer subtitle that explains what makes this book different.
- Nikola Tesla: Imagination and The Man Who Invented the 20th Century
- Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking
- Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
- Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
- The Residence: Inside the World of the White House
- The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
- A**holes: A Theory
10) Use Social Media to get Feedback on a Choice of Book Titles
If you’re trying to decide amongst several possible titles, use the power of social media. Use your blog or Facebook page to ask your readers which one they prefer. This works great for covers, so why not titles.
Not only will you get useful feedback, but your readers will feel more connected to the process and be more likely to buy the book.
For more advice from other author-bloggers like Kristen Lamb, Elizabeth S. Craig, and Suzannah Windsor check out the full post on Good Story Titles at Ride the Pen. (Warning, there is some crude language elsewhere on the blog.)
by Anne R. Allen (@annerallen) October 23, 2016
What about you, scriveners? How do you come up with your titles? Have you ever changed a book’s title? What’s the worst title you’ve ever come up with?
Many thanks to the Edition Guard blog, which named us one of 17 Great Indie Author Websites to follow.
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I can’t say exactly how I do it, except I try to come up with somewhat more unusual titles and get genre in. After hearing about a book at a con, I went to B&N’s site buy it–and found it in row six of other books with exactly the same title!.
My current novel is called The Crying Planet, which was a nickname the soldiers in the story gave to one of the planets. But I had a short story originally published as “Six Bullets,” which was a fantasy that had guns, and I retitled it for indie release as “River Flight” because the title would make readers think Western or Mystery, not Fantasy-Action. I can use settings as part of the title, like “Haunted Space Station” and “Men from the Horizon.” But largely, the title results from what the story feels like to me.
Linda–Six books with the same title! Somebody did NOT do a Google search. Haha. “The Crying Planet” sounds like a great title. But you’re right that “Six Bullets” sounds like it could have been written by Zane Grey. “Haunted Space Station” gives us the genre right away!
Not six books with the same title. Six ROWS of books with the same title.
Linda–SIX ROWS!! OMG. Can I ask what the title was? A lot of minds thinking inside the same box. That’s amazing.
Ascension.
Thanks, Linda! Okay folks: This is a title to avoid if you don’t want to get lost in the crowd!
Drat! That title I was thinking of just won’t fly. What a shame. I guess *Gregarious Snorkelheads Run Amok* will never see the light of day. Thanks – once more – for another thought-provoking post.
CS–Gregarious Snorkelheads Run Amok might be a great title. Right length. It’s fresh. It’s memorable. You could even have a series!
That last non-fiction title certainly grabbed me!
Lots of great tips for finding the right title. Sometimes it is really difficult. I was fortunate my publisher liked my title for my first book. (Helped it had the word star in it.) I was at a loss for the next two, so they came up with those titles. Which worked really well in the long run – they are short, they obviously go together since all begin with Cassa, and if you do a Google or Amazon search, my books are the only items that fit.
Alex–Me too. I might even have to pick up a copy. The author seems to think the world needs a**holes, although I haven’t been able to figure out why.
Interesting that your publisher thought up the titles after the first book. My publisher only tells me they hate my titles, not what I should do to fix them. 🙂 Yours really work. They’re unique and they sure say Sci-Fi.
Fab post! Michael and I decided the call his memoir about his year as a human guinea pig on Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands during the US Army nuclear tests in the mid-1950s, THE ATOMIC TIMES. TAT was also the name of the paper he edited there whose motto was “All the news that fits, we print.”
Simple title, direct, does the job.
Quick plug: Available at Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004H1TLQ2/
Ruth–The Atomic Times is a superb title because it hits all the notes, plus it has a dual meaning: it’s the name of the newspaper and it’s about the “times” as in “the best of times/worst of times”. What an amazing thing to live through!
Titles can be tricky. Usually a title comes to me before I start to write and I end up using it. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because I’ve thought about the book’s theme or logline or maybe it’s just inspiration. (Just inspiration, he says.) Well, in any case, what a great post about something so important to readers. And writers. The title of a book. I know when I wrote the proposals for both nonfiction anthologies, “The Other Man” and “Equality,” I realized they both needed subtitles to let readers know what the book was really about. So glad I used them. Great post, Anne, as usual. And congrats on your recent news: being named one of 17 Great Indie Author Websites to follow. Paul
Paul–Subtitles are so important with nonfiction these days. As you saw with my list of nonfiction titles, almost all nonfiction bestsellers use the same formula for their titles that you used. Start with a short catchy title, then use a longer explanatory subtitle. It seems to be working well.
Thanks! The blog is on the upswing again. We had some rough moments earlier in the year with all our hackers and moving around, but we’re getting on people’s radar again. Last week’s post got over 10,000 hits.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Titles are one of my biggest struggles, and my current WIP has an extremely ill-fitting and boring title. Bookmarking this post.
Caitlin–The great thing about a WIP is that you can change titles as often as you want. I was recently cleaning out my files and found a bunch of files I didn’t recognize. They all turned out to be early versions of the Gatsby Game–with about 7 different titles. All bad. I’m so glad I finally settled on one that worked. But some of the titles took the book in new directions it needed to go, so retitling may be a good part of your process.
Using book titles for other things can also be epic fails.
We might think some titles have only *one* association – but it seems many titles are famous without people realising what the book is about.
I am reminded of a children’s bedroom furnishings manufacturer and (unconnected) a maker of little girls’ underclothes who both thought the ideal name for their range was Lolita because they’d heard the book was about a young girl.
Incredibly the products actually made it into stores (obviously the retailers weren’t literature buffs either) and it was only when the tabloid press took an interest that the products were withdrawn.
The Lolita bedroom furniture was sold (but not for long!) by Woolworths UK.
The “Lolita Midsleeper Combi” was marketed as “the perfect space-saving solution for your child’s bedroom.”
A Woolwoirth spokesman said “the staff who run the Woolworths website “had no idea” of the controversy surrounding the name, admitting that he too “had to go on to Wikipedia” to learn of the novel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1577236/Woolworths-stop-selling-Lolita-bed-for-girls.html
Mark–O. M. G.!!! Nobody at Woolworths had basic literacy skills? And obviously they didn’t have anybody in management over 50. It was a movie, too. That made a pretty big splash. That would be hilarious if it weren’t so horrible.
That’s like a Hannibal Lecter carving set. Or a Sweeney Todd pie dish.
Thanks for the laugh. And the reminder to ALWAYS do a Google search!
Anne this is such a great piece. I talked about the importance of good titles in a memoir class I recently taught and wish I’d read this first. So much food for thought. Keywords are imperative–especially for nonfiction. I chose “Lost in Transplantation” for my memoir because I thought it was a fun play on words but also used an important key word. I made sure the words “organ” and “donor” were in the subtitle. I now wish I’d used “kidney” instead.
Just for fun I plugged in the title of my forthcoming novel (This I Know) and it got a 59.3% success rating but my W.I.P scored only 15%. Might need to reconsider…
Thanks for another insightful blog!
Eldonna–Keywords are all important for nonfiction, aren’t they? Don’t take that title analyzer result too much to heart. I’ve put some bestseller titles in there and they did very badly. BTW, congrats on your recent 2-book contract with Kensington!
Thanks, Anne. Your blog has been a great help in many ways!
Fabulous post! I’ve been struggling with this dilemma for a while now, and have a question for anyone who cares to chime in. I recently received my rights back for my first two titles and now want to re-publish them. Can and should I give the new books (re-edited) new titles, along with new covers, and include a disclaimer that they were “previously published as …”?
The old titles were okay, but not remarkable, so I’m thinking this could be a good opportunity to re-vamp. My concern is that readers might feel mislead. Thoughts? Suggestions?
Debbie–That’s a good question, and one that a lot of writers have to deal with if they have the good fortune to get their rights back.
An old book can really benefit from a new title as well as an updated cover and editing.
The drawbacks are 1) Some long-time fans may buy the book thinking it is a new one 2) You may lose your Amazon reviews.
So make sure you put “previously published as” on the new cover and in your book description. Some online retailers like Amazon will take returns if people buy it and then realize they’ve already read the book.
Sometimes Author Central may move your reviews if you ask them nicely and you send the AISN of the old version of the book.
The final decision will depend on whether the improvement is worth the hassle.
Ah yes, the worse title ever imagined would be the title to first (and so far, only traditionally published book) called “Line 21”.
If you ask anyone what’s the first thing they think of when they here “Line 21”, you would hear crickets chirping quite loudly.
When I’d originally first started writing this book, tax season was in full swing, so the first thing that grabbed my attention was my 1040 (you can probably see where this is going) tax form. Line 21 on the 1040 is for “other income”. If I tried to explain any further, your eyelids would start to droop and drool would roll down your chin….
Anywho, when i got the rights back to the book two years later, the first thing that I did was to have a contest for a new title. The book was re-titled “The Inner Sibling”, which if you read the jacket blurb, makes way more sense than the original title.
GB–That is an excellent choice for a re-title. I can see exactly why “Line 21” seemed like a good one to you, and also why it didn’t work. (Although “Other Income” might not be bad. Hmmm)
I have had lots of working titles like that. “But it’s so perfect for the story!” I’ll tell my editor. “But it will so not sell books” he tells me. Sigh.
Thanks for all of this wonderful information. I went to Lulu and they graded my title 10.2%. Yikes. Too short? Too boring? You don’t want your title be two nouns? Oh well. I was surprised when I started working in a bookstore by how many titles get reused. It does get confusing when the customer only knows the title and nothing else about the book. Great post!
I just re-entered it changing one of the parameters and got 35%. That’s more like it!
Christine–As a bookstore manager, you probably know more about what titles actually sell than that robot does, so don’t take it too seriously. I’m glad to hear changing parameters got you a better score. 🙂
Excellent post. A real saver and reference (or would that be referrer for // construction?). I put several of my potential titles into Lulu Title Analyzer and got ratings from 14% to 52%, zoohh it’s still a W-Title-I-P. Thanks.
Steve–How about saver and bookmarker? When in doubt, I always use another word. 🙂 Hey, you got a 52%! I think that’s better than any of mine got.
Finding a great title has to be some of the hardest tasks in fiction writing. A good title to me often contains some mystery, but not “forced” mystery. You want to establish a bit of curiosity in the reader’s mind. It tells us something important about the story, and it also sounds good. That’s a question of rhythm, a question of melody as well.
Very informative post; thanks for the link!
Alex–Your post had lots of great suggestions. The hooky title that has some mystery is definitely going to be a winner. As I said, “The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime” is one of my all-time favorites.
Excellent point about rhythm!. So many things were wrong with “Private Flemming: His Various Battles” It was wimpy and skittery. But “The Red Badge of Courage” not only provides a striking image with powerful words, but those monosyllabic words sound like a battle drum.
Let’s try this again (the computer ate my first response)… My titles either come to me, or I can’t figure out what to call my books… I get a lot of feedback from friends, other writers, readers. Often, the title will occur to me at the end of the book; I’ll find it in the last paragraph or two. That happened with “A Matter of Identity.” At the end the character thinks, “The matter of my identity has been resolved. It belongs to me and I will never again give it away.” And voila! What had been “Marina’s Story” as a working title, became A Matter of Identity.
Tangled Webs came that way, too. I had another working title until the end when i realized that the plot/subplots were so tangled up… and there came Tangled Webs. Proof of Identity revolves around fingerprint identification; Sins of the Past is about the past coming back to haunt the characters; Piece By Piece is about a character with amnesia who gets her memory back — you guessed it — piece by piece, in random order.
Of my nonfiction, I also rely on subtitles for clarification. My writing workbook series, Write it Right (yes, there are a lot of those titles out there, but it does explain just what I am attempting to do, teach writers to write it right — write it correctly just didn’t cut it, LOL). I let the subtitle of each of the 6 volumes detail the skills covered in that volume, i.e.: Character, Setting, Story; Dialogue, Plot; etc.
This is great information and a lot to think about, since I have two of my Skylark P.I. novellas coming out early next year. The first title only garnered a 41.4% on Lulu, but the second scored 79.6%! Most of my other stories I’m working on I just note as “Kendra’s Story” until a title comes to me. Maybe one of the hundred or more I have in my Possible Titles file will work once they’re done… Or maybe I’ll just publish a book of Possible Titles That Never Went Anywhere… LOL
Thanks for a great post, Anne!
Susan–Thanks for battling the WP demons one more time. I have no idea why they sometimes eat posts. I did go looking for yours in “pending” and spam but no joy.
You got a 79.6 on your WIP title! Wow. I’ve never come close to that. I’m usually in the 30% range.
I do have a folder of titles that never went anywhere. Some I still hope to use someday. In fact they are often the inspiration for stories, but the stories always run off and turn out to be about something else. 🙂
Best of luck with your next two novellas!
I always have a hard time with titles. Usually, what I end up with was suggested or a phrase popped out in the story as fitting. Currently, I have story that I’ve retitled about 5 times and I’m still not sure about what to call it.
Patricia–I have a story I’ve published under at least 7 different titles. For some reason short piece are harder than novels for me to settle on a title for. So I relate!
Well, that’ll teach me to be out all day on a Sunday- Anne’s going to publish a fantastic post just to make me feel like the kid who was late to class.
It’s all been said and it’s all great. Just want to add one of my favorite title-switches of all time. Johnston McCulley first published his yarn about one of the great adventure heroes ever, under the title “The Curse of Capistrano”. It was a pulp serial and probably would have been lost to the ages, but for the fact that Douglas Fairbanks read it, liked it and decided he and Mary Pickford would make it into a movie smash. They convinced McCulley to republish the tale under one cover, and instead of its original name to use the sub-title… “The Mask of Zorro”.
Yeah, good call guys! MUCH better.
Will–Thanks so much for that story! The Mask of Zorro! One of the great titles of all time. “Capistrano” doesn’t sound cursed at all does it? Although actually I think it means “strange head” or “severed head” or something like that.
I had never heard that story and I’ve visited Capistrano several times. Thanks much!
In other Zorro trivia–which I include in Ghostwriters in the Sky: Guy Williams, who played Zorro in the Disney TV show, had to change his name from Armando Catalano so he could play a Latino guy on TV in the 1950s.
I know, right? The Curse of Capistrano, as I said in my blog post about Zorro, sounds like pigeons pooped on your car. That’s too bizarre about Guy, looks like publishers tell us what to name even ourselves sometimes.
Loved this Anne. Gratefully, I’m on the same track with you on titles. And some of those famous titled books you mentioned are indeed better than their original name, but we know that’s not always the case. 🙂
Debby–It’s true that publishers and agents do not always make great choices. When I was shopping around The Gatsby Game to agents, one of them wanted to remove all the Fitzgerald references and the main character and call it Love and Hope. I declined.
Good for you! Love and Hope sounds over done. 🙂
Glad to see things are well with the blog again! I’m not sure if you take requests for blog post topics, but I have one (if you do). I’d love to see a post on how to network without getting caught up in drama.
As to titles, wow! I’m amazed at how much thought you put into this. I agree with others that titles seem to come easily or not at all. Your examples of cozy mystery titles made me giggle. Now I want to write a cozy mystery, just so I can have a cute and punny title. 😀
My favorite book title is one borrowed from Adrienne Rich (my personal hero). It took many months, but I received permission to quote from her poem “Living in Sin.” I love the poem for many reasons, but I especially love its ambiguity. Is the sin living while unmarried, or is it living with someone the narrator doesn’t love? I was grateful to be able to quote the poem in my story.
In other news, my fun and flirty title of “Kimchi with a Side of Spanking” was nixed by a cruel editor. I had to settle for “Seoul Spankings” and was told, “Cabbage is not sexy!” Ah, well. I still got to have my Adrienne Rich.
Anastasia–Titles do seem to come easily or not at all, don’t they? It’s marvelous when you can get that one phrase that means many things and wraps everything in ambiguity.
Hmmm… “how to network without getting caught up in drama” That’s food for thought. I’ll ponder that. It’s not easy, that’s for sure. Learning to step away from the keyboard is a talent we need to cultivate. Thanks for the suggestion. Thanks!
Who says cabbage is not sexy? Tell that to the French! They use the expression “mon petite chou” (my little cabbage) as a term of endearment. I think that title is intriguing! The second sounds a little too much like run of the mill porn to me. But then, I’m not a publisher.
I’ve used that title analyzer before. I think a simple, unique name is really important. You don’t want to do an Amazon search and have dozens of books show up with the same name.
Spunk–Short and unique is the way to go, for sure. You want to do a complete Google and Bing Search (beyond the first couple of pages), not just Amazon, because the title might be shared with a film or song you don’t want to be associated with.
Thanks for this, Anne. I try to come up with t title that was used several times in the book and tells a bit about the theme. I always Google the title and look on Amazon too. You gave me a lot of good tips. Thank you.
Patricia–A title that reflects the theme is especially important for literary fiction. Names and places work well, too. Amazon searches help a lot, especially with nonfiction books. Thanks!
I change my titles constantly. Rarely are my working titles the same as the end product title. For one series I use “Mayhem” in the titles. That wasn’t so hard to do. For the other series, however, book one has a one-word title, so I thought it best to remain consistent. At the time I wrote book one, I wanted the title to have a double meaning: the killer’s MO combined with the emotion impact of the protagonist. Seemed like a great idea then, but titling the sequel had me tearing out my hair. I can’t even imagine what I’ll do come book three. Ah, well. Live and learn.
Sue–One word titles have great impact, but they are problematic, as that guy said in the article at the Millions. You may find later in the series that you need to use the one word from the first and then a subtitle. There are lots of ways to brand a series. You don’t always have to do it with titles. You can use cover art and other stuff. And subtitles are our friends. 🙂
I’m just getting started on a new book that doesn’t even have a working title yet. I’m hanging on to this post. Thanks.
LD–I hope this helps with the title for your WIP!
My publisher has helped me many times with titles. She explained some things about romance titles that give them a little extra attention.
Susan–Romance title rules are very specific, so I’m sure your publisher has some important info. We want to be creative, but we can’t get too creative!
I thought I had the perfect title 🙁 . While it’s not six rows’ worth, there are enough books listed on Amazon to give me pause, esp since I planned to name my trilogy after the first book. OTOH, mine is a historical and most the books that came up are sf and fantasy so maybe with the subtitle and the cover to make a difference??? Great blog! Now I know where to point people who are struggling with titles for tips on brainstorming . A couple things I do are use a thesaurus – which came in handy recently when I had to brainstorm substitutes for the very popular title Fire and Ice (can you hear Pat Benetar singing??? lol) for someone’s ms. I also pay attention to movie titles and tv show episode titles. Some are rather good.
Colleen–I had the same problem with the title for my WIP, which I first wanted to call the Knight of Cups. Turned out a lot of other people thought that was a great title, too. 🙁
Including the director of a recently released indie film. Then I decided that was okay because it was really about the woman character, so I’d call it the Queen of Wands. Even worse. Dozens of them! So out comes the old thesaurus. Wands used to be called Staves in the old Tarot decks.
So now it’s the Queen of Staves. For now anyway.
You’re right about TV episodes. Some of them have great titles. But we never hear them except at the Emmy awards. 🙂
Titles can be tricky. I have a title for my first novella/novelette that I think is well suited, while my current WIP for NaNoWriMo I’m still struggling with, but at least they can be changed at this early stage. I find using song titles helpful, especially for short stories and novellas. I’ve been sneaky and written down every song title by one particular artist for future reference for story ideas. 😉
Multiple books with the same title can be frustrating. I recently looked up ‘The Girl on the Train’ for the Kindle and found a couple of other books with the same title. Some reviews for these other books included such comments as ‘I can’t see how this can be a best seller’ and ‘not the book I wanted’, so you really do need to be informed of the author’s name to avoid such confusion.
Thanks for this post Anne. I’ll be using this for future reference.
Debbie–I’ve read about the problems of the author of *A* Girl on a Train, who wrote hers before *The* Girl on the Train. She’s had lots of complaints and Amazon has marked her book as having “quality issues”, but she’s done nothing wrong but have a book with a similar title to a mega-seller. She’s a pro and a bestseller in the UK, so this hasn’t been good for her. Unfortunately, there’s nothing she could have done, since her book came first.
Song titles are good because they can bring up memories that will resonate with people and make your book memorable, too. Best of luck with NaNo!!
What a horrible position for these authors to be in, which proves how difficult titles can be. And thanks for the good luck wishes Anne – I just might be needing them! 😉
I struggle with titles. I’ve learned that a good title can make a book, and a bad one can break it. Thanks for the great info.
Richard–I think we all struggle with titles. There’s the rare book where the title comes to you first and the rest of the book follows, but usually it’s the other way round and we play with a number before we settle on the right one. (Or our editor or publishers do.) “Crowdsourcing” can help, too: ask peeps in social media or in your writing group or forum to vote. It can be enlightening.
Some of the titles in the list of best sellers have the problems you suggest writers avoid. Part of the reason is that you’re using examples from any time instead of sticking to relatively recent ones. That confuses your message. It seems like books don’t need great titles to sell, but they can be useful when presenting the work to a new audience.
Ruth Harris’s Park Avenue series titles are generic. “Decades”, “Husbands and Lovers”, “Love and Money”, and “Modern Women” only tell me “The setting is New York City and the stories are about women.” (“The Last Romantics” is an interesting, evocative title.) “Love and Money” could be the title to any book. The books themselves are probably excellent, but the titles don’t sell me on the book. The Camilla Randall series titles have a much stronger “read me” factor.
A note about quote titles: they become defanged if the reader has no idea what you’re quoting. His Dark Materials (which is the series name, not a book title) is marketed at preteens. How many preteens have heard of Paradise Lost, let alone read it? The title works because the words sound interesting on their own. The reference is a bonus.