Finding the right title for your book is
critical and it's usually not easy. The goal is to have the potential
reader instantly recognize what your book is about and how it will
probably effect them in a positive way. It should, in other words, give
them a reason to buy the book.
Consider, for example, John Gray's Men
Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus. Although it's impossible to
prove, I believe a major part of that book's phenomenal success was, and
is, it's title. When it first came out in 1992, it got some laughs and
some reviewers panned the title, but everyone who had ever been in a
relationship with anyone of the opposite sex knew exactly what the book
was about. Today, the title has worked its way into common language. In
fact, it's got its own Wikipedia entry.
Much the same thing can be said about Ken
Blanchard's The One Minute Manager. The title alone promises to
solve any managers problems in as little as a minute - pure gold from a
book selling point of view.
Another good example is Dale
Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.
It was written in 1937 and has outsold all books except the Bible!
Again, the title addresses a problem that people want to solve - having
more friends and being influential.
How To Get At The Title
For Your Book
If you're lucky, the title for your book will just appear in your mind.
I had that experience with my book, Powerfully Recovered!
I'd started writing the book, which addresses some of the myths that
have grown up in the 12 Step movement when it dawned on me that the two
most prevalent are the myths of never-ending recovery and perpetual
powerlessness. The title challenges those myths directly and is
instantly understandable by anyone in a 12 Step program.
But sometimes we have to work for titles. A good place to start is with
your book's purpose statement. Reread it and see if there's a pithy,
even shorter way to say it. Think advertising copy.
Another approach is to explain the philosophy or the guts of your
book in 10 seconds - the classic elevator pitch approach.
You can create a list of words about your book, looking for words
that address the problem it solves in an instantly recognizable fashion.
Play with the words. Try them out on friends and see what sort of
response you get.
Working with all these approaches tends to inform your unconscious
which often results in a dynamite title.
The Roll of the Subtitle
Ideally, your book won't actually need a subtitle, but you'll want one
anyway. It acts as an additional selling point, a short explanation that
reassures the reader the book is actually what the title says it is.
Take time with your book's title; you'll be glad you did.
