The Title Can Help Sell the Book

Topic: How important is a title? What attracts you to a certain title, and how do you determine what to title your book?

 

Ah, titles! What a problem they can be.  For a writer, there’s always a “working title,” something to file the document under.  It may be the final title or not.  My three WIP titles, two short stories and one novel are:“The Powwow,”   “The Meth House,”  and Lizzie Bender Ledoux.  I’ll definitely keep the short story titles. I only began “Lizzie” a few weeks ago, so all bets are off as to whether that title will have staying power.

I am a firm believer that short titles are best, easier to remember and with a dramatic punch:  The Great Gatsby, War and Peace, Jane Eyre, 1984, On the Road ,Atonement, Mrs. Dalloway.  Well, you get the idea. My three published books all have short titles, and oddly enough, the working title became the published title: 

The Shadow Warriors, World of Mirrors and Festival Madness.  The title should describe the book, and maybe be mentioned in an important passage of the book.  

Festival Madness

 Then there are wonderful titles of medium length, such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Sun Also Rises, Catcher In the Rye, Gone with the Wind, and A Confederacy of Dunces.  All suggest a mood and even a mystery. Wonderful titles! 

What about longish titles? I am thinking of A Visit From The Goon Squad, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Longer yes, but compelling. Long, long titles are obviously verboten. 

How would the publisher put them on the book cover? 

Short stories can get by with longer titles, but I still like to keep mine short, like “Bad Trip,” and “The Insurrection.”  “The Rich Are Different” is my longest short story title.  

A great title like Gone Girl can help sell a book. By the way, titles cannot be copyrighted. When The Shadow Warriors was already published, and I’d done a lot of PR, I discovered that the name was a popular computer game. I never checked Amazon or Googled it. Maybe Google wasn’t even around then, but I made a serious mistake.

Here are some great writers who have interesting and varied opinions on the topic of titles.  Give them a read.

Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com
Heather Haven http://heatherhavenstories.com/blog/
Dr. Bob Rich  http://wp.me/p3Xihq-MI
Connie Vines http://connievines.blogspot.com/
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.comPeace,