What’s In a Name?
Deciding on the name of your book or creative work will be one of the most important decisions you make. Unless you are a celebrity or an already established author, the title will be the primary reason that people become interested in your book.
The easiest way to approach naming your book is to state the obvious. A title like “Helping Your Angry Child” pretty much says it all. A subtitle can make the book even more specific, creating a promise of what is to come. For the title above, an example would be: “101 Ways to Teach Your Child to Calm Down When He Is Upset.” That's a simple and compelling title for a book and if you are the parent of an angry child, then this would certainly grab your attention.
This is a great approach when there aren’t many competing titles on the market, but if there are many books with similar titles, then yours won’t stand out if you just state the obvious. So you may have to step it up a notch.
The best titles I have seen tell the reader what your book is about in a clever way. Leaving a little ambiguity (but not too much) acts as an invitation for your potential reader to want to look further. Here are some great titles that have resulted in great sales:
- Chicken Soup for the Soul
- Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus
- How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk
- Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
When you read these titles, you sort of get what the book is about, but you also want to find out more.
Avoid titles that are completely vague. When readers are looking for a book, whether it is online or in a bookstore, they scan titles and take a millisecond to read each one. They stop and look closer when a title (or sometimes a cover) catches their interest. Even if they stop and consider your book, they may not purchase it right away, so they have to remember the title to find it again. A vague title will make this task more difficult and that can really affect sales. What could be more frustrating than having hundreds of people know about your book and want to read it, but they can’t find it because they can’t remember your title?
Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. A few years ago I met Tom Phelan, author of 1,2,3 Magic at a conference, and I was telling him how much I admired his book and the thriving business he built from the one title. At that time Tom was celebrating selling the 1,000,000th copy of his book, which is quite an accomplishment in the field of parenting books. This is particularly true when you consider that the book is self-published, and by his own admission, Tom really had no idea what he was doing.
The title, of course, is terrible. It really doesn’t say at all what the book is about or even hint to what someone would learn by reading it. Of course the sub title does explain that the book is about “Effective Discipline for Children 2-12,” but when scanning titles you might miss this important phrase.
Tom knows that his original title was not a good one, but somehow it worked, and the word spread about his book in spite of the title. Now the title has become a brand name, and the ambiguous title that somehow worked for his first book has become a great title for DVD’s, books in other languages, and spin-off books for teens, kids with ADHD, and many more offerings by Tom's company, Parenting Magic. 1-2-3 Magic has become a trusted and familiar name, and tells potential readers this is an authoritative source they can trust.
Of course even though Tom’s original book title could certainly have been better, he was spot on with the content of the book, and worked hard to build his success and to become a nationally known authority on childhood discipline.
The moral of this story? Even a poor title can be overcome by great content and hard work, but selling your book will be much easier if you start off with a good title.
