Hi Bookfoxers,

The writer R.D. Kardon had all her dreams come true.

She was finally publishing her novel "The Final Authority", the novel she'd been working on for 25 years, about one of the first female commercial pilots in the 1990s.

There was only one problem: the publisher hated the title.

They said that if she stuck with that title, people would rest their coffee on her book while buying other books (Ouch).

R.D. Kardon loved the title "The Final Authority" because it was a novel about flying, and in cockpit jargon, the captain of the plane was "The Final Authority." She'd been dreaming of that title for more than two decades.

But she asked: What was another option?

The publisher suggested "Flygirl."

"Flygirl" was sexy. It coaxed the reader to the pages. Plus, it contained the two main pillars of the story: flying and femininity.

R.D. Kardon gave in, and retitling her book was key in her wild success. Flygirl spawned a trilogy of books and won several awards. Most importantly, it launched R.D. Kardon's career.

That's the power of a title. It can make or break a book.

How NOT to title your book

If you take a poll of a hundred booksellers and ask them for one of the worst titled books of all time, "Then We Came to the End" is at the top.

Joshua Ferris released his book about office life in 2007, and it instantly became a runaway bestseller.

It did so not because of the title, but in spite of it.

Bookseller after bookseller told stories about customers who came in saying they couldn't remember a title of a book. When asked what it was about, they said it was a book about working in an office.

Why couldn't anyone remember the title?

Well, that's because there are no concrete words in the title. It's a long string of abstract words with no grip on tangible, physical things.

What word in that title is memorable? Came? End? Then? We?

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Not a single word stands out.

The title was also completely divorced from the actual content of the book. Nothing about that title suggests the drudgery of working in corporate American, in a little cubicle, shuffling papers.

"The Office" on the other hand, is one of the best sitcoms of all time, and its title went straight for the jugular. Or consider one of the funniest movies of all time, "Office Space." Both of those titles didn't shy away from their topic.

Book Titling Strategy

Most authors think the title should accurately describe the story. But this is actually the tertiary job of a title.

The first and most important job of a title is marketing. Unless the title gets readers to BUY the book, it's a bad title.

That's why publishers so frequently retitle books (like R.D. Kardon's Flygirl)

Now, the secondary consideration is that the title should reveal genre. In other words, you want the title to tip off the readers of this genre that this is a book they'd like.

Once again, this is about marketing. Like a book cover, a title has to convince readers to buy this book.

The three things a title should do, in order of importance:

1. Market the book (get customers to buy)
2. Reveal Genre
3. Represent the storyline

How I titled my books

I named my short story collection, "I Will Shout Your Name" because I liked the energy of the phrase. Also, the title has an echo of spirituality for a few reasons:

1. The story collection is about missionaries, and that title describes the desire of missionaries -- to shout God's name.
2. One of the stories in the collection has a similar title: "You Will Shout My Name." That's about an unwilling atheist who gets religious Tourettes and is forced to shout religious things he doesn't believe.

Titling nonfiction books is a little different. I choose the title "The Linchpin Writer" for three reasons.

1. I knew from fifteen years of sending out emails and titling blog posts that all my top opens came from ones with "Writer" in the title.
2. I did market research and discovered the top writing books often had the word "Writer" or "Writing" in the title.
3. Linchpin is a mystery word: a fascinating, unique word to pique interest. It also described the premise of the book: there are key make-or-break moments in your novel, and you better get them right.

The original title was "The Pivotal Moment." It gets the same idea across, but there's no grace or beauty in that title, and authors might not realize that it's a book for them.

2 Techniques for Book Titling

1. Concrete/Emotional

If you use this strategy, you want to plant two key words inside your title, each doing different things.

1. You want a concrete sensory word that lights up the animal part of your reader's brain. A word they can see or taste or smell.
2. You want an emotional word. A word that tugs on the reader's heartstrings in some way.

Example: "The Secret Life of Bees."

"Bees" is the concrete, sensual word. The reader can hear the buzz of a hive, can taste the honey, can see them dipping close to a flower.

The emotional word is "secret." It intrigues the reader, making them wonder about the nature of that secret.

2nd Example: "The Witch's Daughter"

The concrete word is "witch." We can see pointy hats, see them riding on broomsticks, see long, skinny noses.

The emotional word is "daughter." Whether you have a daughter or not, that word draws you in and makes you feel the bonds of a family.

2. Contrast

Find two words that are opposed to each other in some way, and use that wordplay for a clever title.

For instance, in Patrick deWitt's novel, he has brother characters with the last name of "Sisters." So the title of his novel is "The Sisters Brothers."

• Tolstoy does this with "War and Peace."
• Dan Brown does this with "Angels and Demons."

You could even go for more subtle contrast. For instance, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog," by Muriel Barbery, is a striking title because hedgehogs seem the opposite of elegant.

Examples of incredible titles

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. (Dave Eggers). I've always loved this title because it's gently poking fun at titles themselves. This is what every author wants to communicate elliptically with their title, and he just states it outright, which is funny.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals. (J. Maarten Troost). Such a fascinating, memorable title, combining the powerful words of Sex and Cannibals.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu (Joshua Hammer). The contrast of "bad-ass" with the demure word "librarian" works really well, and "Timbuktu" gives the book this exotic flavor.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman). A great title that communicates the opposite of its surface message: she obviously is NOT fine.

Kiss My Assassin (Rod Gray) So many books take a well-worn, popular phrase, and inject it with new life by tweaking a single word. It's punny, it's funny, it's clever and it sells books. (another good one: "Then There Were Nun" by Dakota Cassidy)

How to Escape from a Leper Colony. (Tiphanie Yanique). A leper colony is automatically fascinating. But the word that makes this title is "escape." It gives a narrative to the story, both danger and tension.

Use ChatGPT for Ideas

If you get stuck on a title, ask ChatGPT for help. Here is a sample prompt:

Give me 10 examples of titles that are funny/eye-grabbing/clever about a book that is about X, Y, and Z.

If there is a common theme among the titles that goes in the wrong direction, add to the prompt and ask ChatGPT to avoid those type of titles.

If there is one title that is superior, ask for ten more titles inspired by that single title.

If you want a pun, or want it to be funny or clever, ask for that.

Remember that you might have to clarify your query three or four times to get to some decent title suggestions. Even if it doesn't come up with the perfect title, sometimes a single word or a phrase lights your imagination on fire and allows you to complete the title.

Skyrocket Your Sales

Lastly, learn how to title your book from a guy named Emanuel Haldeman-Julius. Never heard of him? Well, he sold 100 million copies of "little blue books" in the early 1900s, so he knew a thing or two about how to move copies.

How did he sell so many books? Well, he would publish a book with several different titles, see which one sold best, and then use the best title.

He was basically running a gladiator ring for book titles. May the best one win! (Nowadays, we would call this A/B testing).

He found that renaming a book could 10x its sales, and after changing the name of one of his books, it went from selling 6 thousand copies a year to 60,000 copies a year.

All he did was change the title. That's it.

Folks, that's the power of your title. It can make your book a bestseller or banish your book to the discount bin.

Test Your Title

After you pick your title, ask 20 people for their opinion on it.

You want to ask them two questions:

1. Would you buy a book with this title?
2. From the title alone, what do you think the book is about?

FAQ

1. What if someone has already chosen my title?

Usually this doesn't matter as much as you think it does.

Titles are non-copyrightable, so there's no legal problem, and it's just a question of whether someone will mix up your book with theirs.

2. What's the longest/shortest title I should have?

There are plenty of successful one-word titles. Jonathan Franzen loves using a single word for his novels. (Freedom, Crossroads, Purity).

In general, I would say 5 words is around the max (you can stretch to 6 if some of your words are small like The or A).

Talk To Me

Did you like this longer format for my newsletter? Hit reply and let me know.

Please share this email with your writing groups and friends. (that's a link that allows for easy sharing).

Enjoying the writing life,

John Matthew Fox

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