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Tips on Choosing a
Title for Your Book
By Penny Sansevieri
How many of you have spent hours
or days toiling over the title for your book? My first book, The
Cliffhanger, was renamed probably six times before I stayed with
the current title. Naming your book can be difficult, especially
if the book will work as a sort of branding for everything else
you do. Non-fiction books are often seen as a stepping stone to
speaking engagements, product launches, and a variety of other
business endeavors. In fact, the naming of a non-fiction or business
book is so critical that a poorly chosen title can actually make
or break a books success. If you're in the midst of picking a name, or planning future titles.
There are some basic strategies you should consider before you
finalize your book cover.
The name of your
book must tell people what it's about. If you try to be clever
and make them guess, your potential customer will just put it
down and move on to a title they do understand.
Put the benefit
right in the name - for example Chicken Soup for the Soul tells
you right up front that much like a cup of chicken soup when you're
sick, this book is going to make you feel better. If this leaves
you feeling perplexed, take a moment to list five benefits of
your book - once you have those benefits listed slowly but surely
a book title will begin to emerge.
Think about all
the different uses you might be able to derive from the name of
your book. Is it going to be on your web site? Is it a stand alone
book or part of a product line? Or is this book one of a series?
Determining the exact uses of this title will help you define
it further.
And finally,
go see what the competition is doing. Spend an afternoon at the
bookstore and see what titles have worked well for similar books
in your genre.
Other Naming
Tips Did you know that some words are easier to remember than
others? Sound odd? Not really. Language
experts will tell us that we just react differently to certain
sounds. The letters K and P for example are what language experts
call "plosives." A plosive is a little bit of language
that pops out of your mouth and draws attention to itself.
A plosive is a "stopper" in language. A plosive makes
us pause for emphasis when we say it. The letters B, C, D, K,
P and T are all plosives.
What's especially
interesting is that brand names beginning with plosives have higher
recall scores than non-plosive names. Several studies of the top
200 brand names have made that point.
Examples: Bic,
Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Kodak, Pontiac,
etc.
If you've picked
a title for your book or a name for your business or product line
that is "unusual" - you might want to check the meaning
first. That goes for foreign translation as well. Here are a few
examples of names that were chosen without the proper research:
In 1997 Reebok
issued a mass recall of their new women's running shoe dubbed
"Incubus" - a savvy news reporter brought their attention
to the fact that incubus means: "an evil spirit believed
to descend upon and have sex with women while they sleep. Estee
Lauder stopped short of exporting their line of Country Mist makeup
to Germany
when managers pointed out that "mist" in German is slang
for "manure." Trying to be clever, The
folks at Guess jeans placed the Japanese characters "ge"
and "su" next to a model
in Asian magazines, intending them to mean "Guess."
But "gesu" translated in Japanese means "vulgar,"
"low" class" or "meanspirited."
Naming Tip! Stumped
for a name? Try heading over to The Naming Newsletter. While this
site is designed primarily for naming and/or branding companies,
there's a lot of great information on titling strategies and tips
that can translate easily to your book title.
About the author:
Penny C. Sansevieri is a book
publicist who turns authors into success stories. Get her
free author marketing newsletter and insider tips at
http://www.amarketingexpert.com
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