"If your book is a fiction book, sometimes a character or a phrase within the book will work as an appropriate title. A well-known example is To Kill A Mockingbird. One of the main characters utters this phrase once within the book." [Carolyn Campbell, Writers Weekly]
"Titles should be AIRtight: Alliteration ... Iambic pentameter ... Rhyme" [Dan Janal]
"Figurative or abstract titles, such as Sleeping Murder, or Presumed Innocent, produce more top-sellers than literal ones" [Lulu]
"Your book title should portray a message but not be too long as to bore the potential reader. It should of a length that can be read at a glance and require no time at all for it to register with the brain." [Deon Melchior, Article Click]
"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." [Penny C. Sansevieri, Leading Articles]
"When it all comes down to it, go with your gut." [Terri Marie, Search Wrap]
For fun, check out the Lulu Title Scorer. How does your title do?
4 comments:
Funny that you posted this today. There was a story this morning on CBS Sunday Morning all about choosing a perfect book title. The basis was how Catch-22 was actually going to be Catch-18. But there was another book about to come out at the same time that had the number 18 in the title. And so, Catch-22 it became.
Gary Dexter - author, Why Not Catch-21?
www.garydexter.co.uk
Titles are always tricky for me. The Lulu Title Scorer doesn't give me anything over 20% : /
You're doing better than Dan Brown, Emily; The DaVinci Code gets a 10.2% chance.
Woo! Hoo! I got a title to come in at 69%...now all I need to do is write the book. YES!!
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