How do I choose the right title for my (nonfiction) book?
So, how do I choose the right title for my book, or put another way, what makes a good book title?
Choosing the right book title, like choosing a name for anything, whether it’s a gadget you’ve invented, a cat you just adopted, your newborn child, or a business you’ve just started, is no small matter. For a business, the right name can be key to your business’s success. The same goes for a book.
With that in mind, below are some general tips to help you choose the right title for your nonfiction book, especially if it’s a business book.
How do I find the right title for my (nonfiction) book?
If you’ve done everything right when writing your book, your book should have a central topic, and it should also solve a clear problem.
I say this because your book title needs to reflect what your book is talking about and how it will help your reader. And if you aren’t sure what your book is talking about, or your book is talking about too many things, your book’s title isn’t the problem, your book’s focus is.
But let’s assume that you did write a focused book. What should you do first when choosing a title? Here are a few quick steps or techniques to help you generate potentially useful titles—stuff you can do at the comfort of your desk.
How to brainstorm to find a great book title
When it comes to naming anything, especially book titles, I like to brainstorm. It’s fun, it gets the creative juices flowing, and it helps you generate ideas and observations that are free from your internal critic.
How do you brainstorm? It’s easy. Simply spend five or ten minutes jotting down title ideas—write them out longhand if you want to connect even better to your imagination and intuition—and then wait a few minutes before going back and reviewing what you’ve come up with.
When I brainstorm for any kind of name, I jot down as many ideas as I can. Again, I don’t worry if some of my ideas are silly or non-traditional—I’m just brainstorming. And when you brainstorm for your book title, do the same thing: jot down as many ideas as you can while thinking of what will grab the reader’s attention.
Remember, generate ideas first, and then refine and narrow your ideas down. Repeat this process as many times as you need.
How to write the descriptive part of the title
Once you have reviewed your list and have chosen a few options that might be contenders, now it’s time to craft the words that come after the colon. This part of the title generation requires some imagination as well, but this time you’re thinking more about what problem your book solves and who your book helps. Hopefully, you can speak to both when you come up with this statement.
As a great example of a book title that has both these parts, let me introduce you to Seth Godin, writer of many business books, and one of his books that has a great title:
Purple Cow: Transform your business by being remarkable
This title works because it contains both parts I just mentioned. It has a catchy title in the first two words before the colon (:), and it has a great sentence after the colon that says what the book will do for its readers (help them be remarkable so they can transform their businesses). Could he have said the second part in a couple different ways? Maybe, but the point is that he generated a quick, concise explanation, one that tells what his book does and starts off with a great verb—transform.
What makes a good book title?
Again, your book title first needs to grab your potential reader’s attention and then tell them how you are going to help them. This is especially true for business books.
Godin’s title does both, of course. It grabs the potential reader’s attention (what the heck is a purple cow?), and the rest of the title tells them what that book will do for them, the problem it will solve.
Godin is apparently a master at crafting the right marketing messages, so it’s likely most of his books’ titles will be both catchy but have some content, so feel free to look them up and see if those titles do exactly what his Purple Cow title does. I bet they do.
When should I choose my book title during the book-writing process?
You may have wondered if choosing your book title is the first thing you do when writing your book or the last. I’ll try to answer that here.
As you outline your book and start writing, you may be tempted to come up with the perfect title. If one pops into your head, then feel free to jot it down and use it, but choosing a title isn’t something you need to worry about when you’re just getting going writing your book.
Instead, wait to choose your title after you’re written most or all of your book and you are getting close to publishing.
Many experienced writers find that they can write their book without having chosen a killer title yet. They find that their book project can hum along just fine using a decent working title. Filmmakers do this too, because naming a film is often done some time after it’s in the can, as they say. In fact, movies often have different titles for the different countries in which they are shown.
Dos and Don’ts of choosing the right book title
This will repeat some of what I’ve said above, but here are a few quick dos and don’ts to remember when choosing your book’s title.
Dos
When you choose your book title, do the following:
- Choose a catchy title
- Choose an original title
- Choose a title that is descriptive
- Choose a title that speaks to your book’s audience
Don’ts
When you choose a book title, avoid doing the following:
- Don’t choose a title that is vague
- Don’t choose a title that doesn’t have anything to do with your book
- Don’t choose a title that too many others have used (book titles can’t be copyrighted, but that doesn’t mean you should use the same title someone else already has)
- Don’t make your title too long
Who chooses my book title if I publish my book traditionally?
This is a great question. Typically, your publisher’s marketing department will mostly choose your book’s title, unless you have already come up with a killer title that they can’t beat.
When you self-publish, as more and more people are doing nowadays, you and you alone choose your book title. It’s a fun responsibility, but it can be daunting. Still, just follow my above suggestions and you should be fine.
If you read anything you want to know more about, or if you just want to know more about writing a book, feel free to contact me via the form below: