Keeping it brief today, folks! It’s been a busy morning so I haven’t been able to produce an entry this week that delivers my typically insightful and sage musings on life, but I had to share this one link with you. This is writer and comedian Dan Wilbur’s genius attempt to “cut through all the cryptic crap” that one finds on those mystifying book jackets and instead get straight to the point.
So check it out. They’re hilarious and most are spot-on. Enjoy!
Authors, agents and publishers tend to agonize over book titles. You want something evocative, witty, literary, whimsical, muscular, funny, quirky, different, but not too different, alliterative, lyrical, short…. You basically want the equivalent of the advertising jingle you can’t get out of your head. But, as Dan Wilbur points out, readers are sometimes flummoxed by titles that give them no hint of what the story they’re going to spend hours, days, sometimes months trying to get through is about or that don’t quite prepare them for the experience they’re about to embark upon (good or painful).
Some titles, of course, are exquisitely straightforward (The Old Man and the Sea, for instance, pretty much sums up what you’re up against with the longest short novel ever), but there are plenty that are headscratchers. What are some of the titles you’d like changed for clarity’s sake and what would their replacements be?
The question of what to title a book is often an interesting one, and it is also critically important. If the title doesn’t work, the book might not sell, especially if that book is an impulse buy, discovered by a reader browsing in a bookstore—either virtual or bricks and mortar.
A book’s title should do many things:
It should be appropriate for books in its category. You should not, for instance, make the title of a novel sound like a cookbook .
The title should be as descriptive of the book as possible. Yes, I know, so many people cite What Color is Your Parachute? or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance neither of which described their respective books and both of which were massive bestsellers—but these were extremely unusual cases. Titles, as a rule, should not mislead consumers; they should attract and inform them.
A title should also be “catchy.” Examples include The Tipping Point, Outliers, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, People Like Us, and Napoleon’s Buttons. It should invite the consumer to pick up the book.
Titles should be original; try not to choose a title that has been used by others as this can be confusing, especially in cataloging books. By the same token, you also shouldn’t try to copy successful titles in a way that might deceive the book buyer.
The title should be something that you and your publisher mutually agree on; it is very rare that a publisher will demand that the author accept a title they don’t like. On the other hand, I have learned over the years to carefully listen to the publisher’s ideas—after all it is in their best interests (too) to sell as many books as possible. In fact, often publishers will “try out” different titles on the book buyers at the major accounts—these are important and knowledgeable people and if they feel they are part of the decision making process when it comes to selecting a title, they often are more supportive of the book when it comes to ordering and even displays.
I ran across this recent blog entry about selecting a title and hope you will find it informative and useful. It is written by a book salesman—who seems to care a lot and certain knows his subject
Of course, if you have any additional thoughts on the topic of title selection, I would very much like to hear what you have to say.
The other day I came upon this piece about bestselling author M.J. Rose and it made me realize that there are still many authors who don’t take the bull by the horns and accept responsibility for the process of publishing their books especially in the area of promotion and marketing.
So often I hear clients say that the publisher is postponing publication of their books yet again, and I wonder why they don’t realize that publishers won’t put a book into a final publishing schedule until the final manuscript has been accepted. When the author is late with either his initial delivery or returning his edits, of course his book’s publication is going to be affected.
Then, there’s the author who hates the cover art for his or her book but then doesn’t suggest an alternative. This is part of the authors’ responsibility and it’s why we insist that there be language in the contract offering them consultation on the cover, and while it can be challenging it can also be fun. Ditto for the title. So many authors hate the titles their publishers like; they object, but they don’t come up with any alternate suggestions, and as a result, they are often truly unhappy with their work’s title.
Finally, of course, comes the promotion and publicity and it is here, as M.J. Rose so correctly says, where the author really needs to take full responsibility. No longer are most publishers willing to foot the bill for extensive publicity campaigns for two reasons: 1) they don’t have the money in many cases and 2) most of the methods that were once effective in publicizing a book are no longer working. Today, it is the author’s “job” to promote and sell his or her book—by using social media like Facebook and Twitter, by blogging, by calling on independent bookstores themselves and by doing this every day, especially for the initial six weeks after their book’s publication.
No more can or should an author complain about his or her publisher. This is counterproductive. Instead, the author should take charge in every way possible to get his or her book out into the marketplace and reach a wide reading audience. Only when that has been done effectively can the author become a writer again.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this so let me know.
You know how I love a good bad title—the more hilariously bad, the better. In fact, occasionally I come up with some myself and mutter them aloud much to the dismay of my officemates. And I was positively inspired by our own DGLM bad title contest. But alas, not everyone is like me. It was when I stumbled upon this little primer from The Rumpus’s Eric Puchner that I realized some more helpful, more constructive individuals aim to steer authors away from unfortunate titling. Among the types to avoid: The Faux Poetic but Authentically Meaningless (“Hunt the Mist Slowly”) and The Lofty Abstraction (“The Lonely Shackles of Mortality”).
Authors, do you find the list helpful? And in the spirit of being constructive, what others would you add?
Thanks to all who competed and voted in DGLM’s first competition! Robert Kent (of Robertkent.net fame, naturally) is the winner of our contest and this pretty blue DGLM water bottle!
Robert’s winning entry in the hilariously bad titles contest was ATLAS HUGGED: A Guide to Encouraging Charity in Your Community.
Congratulations also to runners up Scott Martelle’s TWEET JESUS: Bible Passages for the Twitter Age and D. Antone’s WHAT WAS THE NAME OF THAT BOOK? Everything Known and Forgotten about Alzheimer’s Disease. Your prize is the (dubious) glory of knowing you made us laugh!
Robert, write to me at labramo@dystel.com to send your mailing address and claim your prize!
The Ghostbusters theme has been ringing through my head this morning, because of a charmingly named article I’ve been corresponding about written by one of the agency’s clients. I’ve had “Paperback Writer” stuck in my head for days because of my own foolish blog post title from Friday. And I was once tormented for months by two projects I had on submission at the same time that had song lyrics as working titles.
Titles can certainly stick with us, especially when they’re allusions to something else. In college I took a class on literature of the “transition” with a professor who was fond of irrelevant tangents, so I often entertained myself by picking out book titles from the poetry course pack. WB Yeats’s “The Second Coming” alone is owed a debt of gratitude from the classics Things Fall Apart and Slouching Towards Bethlehem, and if you search the poem’s key phrases you can find a surprising number of others. WWI era poetry has also provided authors quite a bit of inspiration.
And beyond songs and poetry, puns and movie titles provide a treasure trove of opportunities for books, especially series fiction. Our own Victoria Laurie’s two mystery series are a perfect example.
Unfortunately, titling books is often much, much harder than just coming up with something to reference. As agents, we often have a hand in helping to come up with great titles for our books—and brainstorming lists of options for each others’ clients can be both a fun and trying experience. Recently, after hundreds of choices were suggested and nixed for a particular book, I decided to consult the internet for help and stumbled upon a great and also hysterical tool for authors: author MD Benoit’s Random Title Generator (note: there are words that might offend some, so use with caution). We actually found a handful of really good titles—though none quite right for the book—and some that were so delightfully unfortunate we had to share those with each other, too. Click on over to the title generator and get yourself a new title for your masterpiece or a working title so atrocious it’ll help lighten the mood whenever you get frustrated with writers’ block.
But we think that you, our faithful blog readers, can do better than a random word combiner. So come up with the best bad fake book title you can and leave it in the comments—bonus points for giving us a logline or subtitle to give us context. We’ll take entries until the end of the day on Friday, select our favorites as finalists, and let you fine folks pick the winner here on the blog. Winner gets a shiny new DGLM water bottle!
September 14, 2010 
DG&B 