How To Title a Book
Of all the writing habits I have, one of the worst – the worst from good financial sense point of view – is that I like writing LONG books.
My first novel was a spine-breaking 180,000 words. Not one of my novels has ever been less than 110,000 words. The first “short story” I wrote was 8,000 words, which is to say miles too long to be an actual short story. Heck, even this email is likely to be far longer than any other email you get in your inbox today.
Ah well. There are some things you can’t fight, and my addiction to length is one of them.
But that also means that when it comes to short-form copy, I’m at a loss.
I’m not especially good at book blurbs, which want to be about 100-120 words (depending a bit on layouts and where you’re expecting them to appear.) Since titles need to be short and punchy, I’m not especially good at those either.
In a word: I’m pretty damn rubbish when it comes to coming up with titles … and this email is going to tell you how to write them.
Which means if you want to ignore the entire contents of what follows, on the basis that I obviously, obviously, obviously don’t know what I’m talking about, then I have to say that the evidence is very much in your favour.
That said, I think it’s clear enough what a title needs to do. It wants to:
- Be highly consistent with your genre
- Offer some intrigue – for example, launch a question in the mind of the reader
- Ideally, it’ll encapsulate “the promise of the premise” in a few very short words, distilling the essence of your idea down to its very purest form.
The genre-consistency is the most essential, and the easiest to achieve. It matters a lot now that so many books are being bought on Amazon, because book covers – at the title selection stage – are no more than thumbnails. A bit bigger than a phone icon, but really not much. So yes, the cover has to work hard and successfully in thumbnail form, but the title has more work to do now than it did before.
Genre consistency is therefore key. Your title has to say to your target readers, “this is the sort of book that readers like you like”. It has to invite the click through to your book page itself. That’s its task.
The intrigue is harder to do, but also kinda obvious. “Gone Girl” works because of the Go Girl / Gone Girl pun, and those double Gs, and the brevity. But it also works because it launches a question in the mind of the reader: Who is this girl and why has she gone? By contrast, “The Girl on the Train” feels a little flat to me. There are lots of women on lots of trains. There’s nothing particularly evocative or intriguing in the image. I don’t as it happens think that book was much good, but I don’t think the title stood out either. (I think the book sold well because of some pale resemblances between the excellent Gone Girl and its lacklustre sister. The trade, desperate for a follow-up hit to Gone Girl, pounced on whatever it had.)
The third element in a successful title – the “promise of the premise” one – is really hard to do. I’ve not often managed it, and I’ve probably had a slightly less successful career as a result.
So what works? Well, here are some examples of titles that do absolutely nail it:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Brilliant! That title didn’t translate the rather dour and serious Swedish original (Man Som Hatar Kvinnor / Men Who Hate Women). Rather it took the brilliance of the central character and captured her in six words. She was a girl (vulnerable), and she had a tattoo (tough and subversive), and the tattoo was of a dragon (exotic and dangerous). That mixture of terms put the promise of the book’s premise right onto the front cover and propelled the book’s explosive success.
Incidentally, you’ll notice that the title also completely excludes mention of Mikael Blomkvist, who is as central to that first book as Salander is. But no one bought the book for Blomkvist and no one remembers the book for Blomkvist either. So the title cut him out, and did the right thing in doing so.
The Da Vinci Code
Brilliant. Dan Brown is fairly limited as a writer, but it was a stroke of genius to glue together the idea of ancient cultural artefacts with some kind of secret code. Stir those two things up with a bit of Holy Grail myth-making and the result (for his audience) was commercial dynamite.
And – boom! – that dynamite was right there in the title too. The Da Vinci part namechecks the world’s most famous artist. The Code part promises that there are secret codes to be unravelled.
Four words delivering the promise of the premise in full.
I let You Go
This was Clare Mackintosh’s breakout hit, about a mother whose young son was killed in a hit-and-run car accident. The promise of the premise is right there in four very short words … and given a first person twist, which just adds a extra bite to the hook in question. A brilliant bit of title-making.
___
So that’s what a title wants to do. A few last comments to finish off.
One, I think it’s fair to say that it’s quite rare a title alone does much to propel sale success.
Because there are a lot of books out there, and because everyone’s trying to do the same thing, there’s not much chance to be genuinely distinctive. My fifth Fiona Griffiths novel was called The Dead House, but there are at least three other books on Amazon with that title, or something very like it. That didn’t make my title bad, in fact – it did the promise of the premise thing just fine – but I certainly couldn’t say my title was so distinctive it did anything much for sales.
Two, if you’re going for trad publishing, it’s worth remembering that absolutely any title you have in mind at the moment is effectively provisional. If your publishers don’t like it, they’ll ask you to change it. And if they don’t like your title #2, they’ll ask you to come up with some others. In short, if, like me, you’re bad at titles, you just don’t need to worry too much (if you’re going the trad publishing route, that is.) There’s be plenty of opportunity to hone your choice well prior to publication.
Three, you don’t want to think about title in isolation. There should, ideally, be a kind of reverberation between your title and the cover. That reverberation should be oblique rather than direct. Clare Mackintosh’s I Let You Go had for its cover image a butterfly trapped against a window – a metaphorical reference to the anguish of the book’s premise. If instead it had shown a mother obviously distraught as a car struck her son, the cover – and title – would have seemed painfully clunky and ridiculous.
If you get a great cover image that doesn’t work with your chosen title, then change the title. If you have a superb title and your cover designer’s image is too directly an illustration of it, then change the image. That title/cover pairing is crucial to your sales success, so you can afford no half-measures in getting it right.
That’s all from me.
My kids are making elderflower cordial and singing as they do so. They are also wearing helmets for no reason that I can possibly understand.
Till soon
Harry
PS: Want to know what I think of your title? Then I’ll tell you. Just pop your title (plus short description of your book) in the comments below. I’ll tell you what I think.
Persimmon Seasons
Based on actual events, 5 women, loosely connected by place and kinship, must wait through self-defeating heartbreaks before realizing the joy that comes with acceptance.
Um, yes, not bad. I think that does convey the broad genre of the book and (for your target reader) there might be a note of intrigue. Is the word “persmimmon” too exotic, I wonder? Not sure. But some people just won’t know what it means, or they’ll connect it with a large UK housebuilder. But definitely not bad for your market.
Hi Harry, my title is Left Behind.
It’s a story about a group of people who are travelling on the London Underground when their carriage becomes detached from the train and left behind. They find their way out through one of the old abandoned stations but the London they emerge into isn’t the one they left behind. At its heart it’s a story about good and evil and self sacrifice, with some monsters thrown into the mix.
It’s influenced by the likes of Stephen King, Joe Hill and CJ Tudor; a story about people and relationships but set in an unusual time and place, so I’m struggling to fit it into a particular genre. There is a bit of fantasy, distopia and horror, but it doesn’t feel like it sits comfortably in any of those genres.
Anyway, what do you think of the title? (And if you have any suggestions on genre I’d be happy to listen)
Thanks in advance, Naomi 😀
I’d rethink that title–there was a very popular series of Christian apocalypse novels a few years ago called Left Behind. Nicolas Cage starred in the film version of the first novel, which was also called Left Behind. Maybe consider Detached?
That could be why I’ve had no interest from agents! I wasn’t aware of the series or the film, as it doesn’t sound like it would be my cup of tea. I’d better get re-thinking. I like Detatched but I’m not sure it fits with the rest of the story. Thanks for the tip 😊
Yes, quite. Good title, except that it’s been properly colonised by a book series very different from your own. And on genre, you are squarely, squarely in the fantasy genre. That’s good – better to have a secure location. And fantasy is a broad and capacious genre, so you don’t need elves or dragons to qualify!
Thanks Harry 😀
I’m about to republish a book on Kindle titled Escape from India. No official cares that his wife and daughter are held captive by a prince who is above suspicion. The prince is involved in organ harvesting and slavery. Marvin Shelby, an American computer scientist enlists the aid of his students and some villagers to attempt the rescue. Their efforts are complicated by Sonje, Marvin’s German mother-in-law who takes charge of everything.
Um, the title doesn’t really convey genre very well. I’d guess historical fiction from the title. And your book is an issue-led book about organ harvesting and modern slavery. You need to get that into title somehow – a distant nod, maybe, but something that hooks your target audience. Remember you can use the cover image and title to create something jointly. So “The Girl from Bangalore” doesn’t say enough on its own, but in combination with the right cover image, you’d be able to hone down your message.
Thought I’d go for something unique…
Qualkers.
It’s a contraction of Quantum and walkers…
A teenage boy finds he can walk to alternate timelines. At first it’s just variations on the world he knows, places with better weather or a factory that’s derelict in one world but still in operation in his own, but soon he discovers some that are distinctly different. WW1 didn’t end until the 1950s, the world was devastated by nuclear war and the nation that wasn’t bombed, suffering from nuclear winter, swept the globe.
That’s where the major trouble starts for him.
That’s the first book, I’m thinking “The omnium cycle” for the series because I’m well into book six now.
I don’t actually mention the word Qualkers until book 5 though…
OK. Good concept, crap title! For one thing, you’d have to explain the title in the book itself. You can’t hope for readers to wait till book 5. But also – and worse …
The title means nothing at all to any reader. It could be a comedy story about baseball for all I know. Genre or premise could really be anything at all. So why not keep it simple: “The Quantum Walkers” – that already defines genre and offers a prick of interest. But better still …
“The Quantum Walker” – by putting the term in the singular, you imply a specific character and that provokes a more specific set of questions in the reader: who is this person? WHat is their special power?
If you don’t mention quantum walking anywhere in book 1 you’ll need to rethink, but that’s probably the basic direction you want to take.
My current WIP is called …
Not My Sister
A psychological thriller about women who discover they are not related to their families when one takes a DNA test. My published novels are called …
Dying to See You
and
Scared to Breathe
I’m not certain this title is right for the new novel. I really like
Your Life is Mine
but it’s been done already.
These titles are OK, and they do define the genre/promise of the book. But they’re quite direct. They’re not very oblique, which means that they almost answer the question they ask. So with “not my sister” you’re sort of just telling people what the book is about, rather than prompting them to explore it. So something like “Sister, Sister” would hint at the theme of the book, but not reveal it. That’ll (hopefully) nudge people into clicking through to your actual book page.
Hi. My title is: Not Any Painted Angel
The story is about an accomplished, self assured and fully employed girl who is a wheelchair user. She is mad about the guy down the corridor. He is a sculptor, talented but incompetent, indolent and unemployed. He was told by his tutor that he should ‘seek perfection in everything’. Can she help him to understand that perfect physical beauty might be desirable in art, but may be an unrealistic aspiration in real life? Oscar Wilde said “Somehow life is bigger after all than Any Painted Angel”.
Thoughts?
I like the “Painted Angel” bit, but the archaic “Not Any” at the front I find a bit off-putting. Me, I’d just go for “Painted Angel” – I think that’s strong just on its own. And again, hinting at the subject of the book but not really giving it away in the title is a better strategy.
Thanks so much – I now have a new title!!
Hi, my title is: His Eyes Tight Shut or alternatively The Game Changer
In 1979 Charlie Brown, the BBC senior news editor to the Middle-East, is arrested whilst on a tour of duty in Saddam’s Iraq. Illegally imprisoned without trial on charges of sedition, he suffers unimaginable torture. Charlie survives and three years later he is suddenly released without warning or reason. He returns to the UK severely scarred both mentally and physically. The experience resurrects, too, scars of a different kind: his childhood and abuse at his boarding school. His family, his occupation…his life…prove all to be in jeopardy.
A opinion would be gratefully received.
Um – I just don’t see any real connection between those titles and your genre. (Indeed, I don’t quite know what the genre is from this description. Is it a serious psychological study? Or is it a thriller? I’m not sure.) But either way, you haven’t really hinted at the Iraq background, or the imprisonment theme, or the thriller part. If you’re writing a thriller, then something like “The Baghdad Release” immediately sends a flare up to your target readers. If you’re thinking more serious fiction, then, I think you need to find your Big Theme and provide a hint of it on the page.
My book is about DC who is being set up and forced out of the Police. His name is Alfie Deadman and my working title is Deadman Walking, but I’m not sure the pun is a good idea. My alternative is One For The Road as this relates to this being his last case as a police officer, that the thing he is being set up relates to an RTA, and that he allegedly has a drink problem (he doesn’t, but he finds it expedient to stop altogether). Finally, by the end he earns the nickname The Gomshall Gumshoe which is another alternative, but maybe for another book in the series.
My novel is about a 16-year-old girl who kills her womanising boyfriend and buries him in the orchard. When his body is discovered she has to avoid prison. She discovers that others are complicit in her downfall but has to face up to her part and her guilt. She has to kill the ‘young girl inside’ and face up to her responsibilities. It’s called ‘Killing The Girl’.
Um, I’d go for something a tad more personal. “Killing Monica”, say. The personal element just crystallises what (in crime fiction terms) feels a very general title.
Hi, my book is set in mid eighteenth-century Italy, and tells the story of two young boys who are bought from their families by a socially ambitious count, castrated and sent to a conservatoire in order to learn to be castrati. The story is of passion, murder, revenge and forgiveness. The title is “Song of the Nightingale”.
Yes, I think that works. It feels like hist fic, and the reference to the subject of you book is oblique not direct. You do need a supportive cover image though. So something that says “eighteenth century castrati” not “pretty woodland bird”!