Book Cover Coaching: Book Titles--Top 5 Tips

Getting ready to write a book title?
Keep these 5 five basic tips in mind.

By Susan Kendrick

1. Use short words. Your book title should be easy to say, hear, and remember. Also, you’re going to talk about your book—a lot. Choose a book title you can live for a long time and that other people will want to talk about, too.

2. Don’t expect the title alone to do it all. Keep copy on your book's front cover to a minimum to create a billboard effect. This will be a big help to your book cover designer. The purpose of the book title and subtitle is to magnetically draw in readers and to get them to take a closer look, online or in a bookstore. The title hits them on some gut, intuitive, or emotional level. The subtitle then steps in to define the benefits of your book for your target audience--what it's about, who it's for, what it will do for you, the reader. You then have your book's back cover sales copy for a killer headline, sales copy, testimonials, and all the other details that will get them to buy your book.

3. Decide now if your book will be part of a series. If so, build that flexibility into the title of the first book so that subsequent titles and topics can easily fit into the series format. Think Chicken Soup for the Soul for…

4. Check your best book title ideas on Google and Amazon. Chances are, if you've come up with a great book title, someone else has already have thought of it. Book titles cannot be copyrighted, but you don’t want your book to be confused with anyone else’s either. You want to create your own unique book brand and followingt. A unique book title also helps when you go to reserve it as the URL for your book’s website or book blog. This is another reason for a short, punchy title with key words that will make a simple, easy-to-remember domain name.

5. The biggest tip of all--especially when you are on your third page of book title ideas and still not coming up with one that works--is to first decide what you need to say then how to say it. Market positioning is everything. For a title with substance and flair, substance comes first.

A great book title pulls in not just readers, but also distributors, the media, corporate sponsors, cataogues, seminar companies, and more. Learn more than a dozen ways your book title can help you market your book at http://www.writetoyourmarket.com/action2.html

Questions? Please give us a at 715-634-4120 or email info@WriteToYourMarket.com

© Copyright 2007, Susan Kendrick, Write to Your Market, Inc.
www.WriteToYourMarket.com
715-634-4120