That elusive thing: the perfect book title for your business book, self-help guide or memoir.
It feels so important, doesn’t it? If you’ve told your friends and family you’re writing a book, I bet the first thing they asked you was, ‘What’s it about?’
And then they probably said, ‘What’s it called?’
So it’s no wonder that you might feel fixated on your book title right from the beginning.
After all, it’s nice to have a hook to hang your book on, and having a title in mind is a great way of doing that.
More importantly, your title will have a major impact on whether or not people buy the book, especially if they come across it online. Next to the cover design, it’s the single most important pre-purchase feature.
As a book ghostwriter and book coach, I work with a lot of authors who want the perfect title for their book. From my experience, here are some quick and easy ways to generate ideas:
What’s the benefit?
What’s the one, clear end benefit your readers will get from your book? What does it help them to achieve?
For instance, if you’re guiding people towards overcoming their fears so that they can enjoy their lives with more freedom, your title could be something like Beat your fears and feel free. It does what it says on the tin.
This is the most underestimated approach to writing a book, probably because it’s so obvious. There’s a temptation to overcomplicate things if you’re not careful.
All the feels
What kind of feeling do you want to generate in your potential readers when they see your title? Do you want them to feel inspired, excited, relieved, angry, in control, knowledgeable – or some other emotion?
This is important because we only feel moved to act when we feel something. If your title generates the kind of emotion you want your readers to have when they’ve read your book, you’re half way to selling it to them already.
Take Charge of Your Child’s Sleep by Jodi Mindell and Judith Owens is a great example title. The feeling it evokes in me is relief. At last – someone’s telling me how to get my kids to sleep!
Who are you talking to?
Who’s your target audience, and how are you going to bring it into your title?
Having a tightly defined readership is vital for your business book’s success, and there’s no better way to let your potential readers know that they’ve come to the right place than if they can recognise themselves in the title
You can do this in subtle ways. For example, Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich by Lois P. Frankel makes it clear that the book is aimed at women who want to improve their finances and aren’t afraid to make a few changes along the way.
Consider the fit
What position will your book occupy in the lives of your readers?
Is it an all-encompassing guide to a particular area of their life, a ‘starter’ help book, a step by step set of instructions – or what? Knowing this will help you to come up with a title that matches your readers’ desires and expectations.
For example, a title like How to Get Your Blog Up and Running in One Day is clearly aimed at people who don’t yet have a blog and want to get started quickly and easily. It’s not promising to take them through the whole journey of turning a blog into a global success.
When your potential readers can instantly see how they would use your book, they’ll be likely to buy it and even become a loyal fan.
Be memorable
If your book has an unconventional title it can help to fix it in people’s memories. This can be a huge help when you’re marketing your book, and is also a gift to those who want to recommend it to others.
I remember being told about a book about using metaphors in sales and marketing called The Tall Lady With the Iceberg by Anne Miller some years ago, and it stuck in my mind at once. This made it easy for me to find and buy it later.
However, tread with caution here. For every person who buys your book because of the easy-to-remember title, there will be another who feels confused. And when people are confused, they don’t buy.
This is also a moment when your sub title becomes essential. Anne Miller’s sub title, for instance, is The Power of Metaphor to Sell, Persuade and Explain Anything to Anyone. Now her potential readers are clear.
Think like a blogger
Professional bloggers know how to hook readers’ attentions, and you can take inspiration from their techniques.
How about tried and trusted title openers such as ‘How to’, ‘7 Ways to’, ‘The Surefire Way to’, ‘Why You Should Never’? These deliver a specific promise, which is always a powerful approach for a business book or self-help guide title.
For a book, though, try to combine this with a touch of gravitas. When you’re asking people to consider buying and reading a 50,000 word book, it’s a very different proposition to a 2,000 word blog post.
Create a sub title
You’ll probably need a sub title below the main title, especially if your main one is a bit quirky (see The Tall Lady With the Iceberg above). Potential readers want to know what your book’s about.
Suppose your book about overcoming fears features a metaphor of predatory animals stalking your reader throughout (the panther of phobias, the alligator of anxiety – okay not a great idea, but you see where I’m coming from).
Because of this you’ve decided on a main title of The Fear Safari. You’ll need something to explain the topic and could add a subtitle of Beating Your Anxieties One by One.
One of the brilliant benefits of a sub title is also that you can include keywords in it, which helps your book appear in Amazon’s search results. Someone searching for a book about anxiety might well come across that book, but without the sub title they wouldn’t.
Next steps for your perfect book title
When you’ve come up with some title ideas, the next step is to research your competitor titles. It’s important to avoid duplicating the name of a book in a similar category or field, because you want yours to stand out. Put your title into the Amazon search bar and back it up with some Google research, and this will quickly tell you if there’s an issue. If there is, you might only need to tweak your title for it to work.
Of course you can do this right at the beginning, as the process might give you some inspiration for your own title. But some people prefer to avoid the distraction of worrying about what other people have chosen first.
Next, make sure that your title is short enough to fit comfortably on the book cover. You should aim to have nothing longer than 6 or 7 words (more for the sub title if you need it).
In all this, bear in mind that your title has one role and one role only for your book: to encourage your potential readers to pick it up, consider it and then buy it. But it can also be a lot of fun choosing the perfect book title – it makes your book ‘real’.
And one day it will have your name underneath it. How cool is that?
