Creating a title for your work.
To run from a recent post. I finished my first draft of my novel.
I feel I am stumped with the title. I have had people asking me, What’s it called? I don’t know yet.
I came to conclusion. A Book Title = the essence of your book + a twist.
Simple right? Not for me. Until recent, I never thought about the immense pressure on the book title.
This week’s topic is: Book titles.
Am I the only one that feels confused on how to make a book title that will make or break your sales?
If there are any published authors, how did you conjure your book title?
Aspiring authors in draft stages, are you stuck like me? If not, how did your title come about?
Leave your comments below. Please share, tag or re-post this topic to someone that would have an opinion.
#DWTSmith #booktitles
Douglas W.T. Smith 
While my shared blog, Blogolepsy, doesn’t have anything in the works for it yet, I suggest you check out Jenna Moreci on YouTube. The most essential thing for me was googling it afterwards, Below Moons used to be called Alpha, and I did not get a nice surprise googling that
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Thank you for the suggestion, I will look for her 😃
How did you come up with your title?
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My titles came pretty easily, besides Below Moons. I think it’s important to suggest the main characters emotions if your books have intense emotional scenes. For example, Battlefields was already taken by other publications and was purely physical. By adding The Implosions it implies the focus on internal conflict within the plot.
Below Moons was way more difficult because I became attached to the original name, Alpha. When I changed it I decided to call it Below Moons because it was more subtle than other titles that could be related to werewolves. Also by using Moons, the different perspectives of the characters can be represented.
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Just spoke with the co. authors of Blogolepsy, keep your eyes peeled and we’ll be uploading a discussion video soon 😊
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Sorry that I can’t be of much help this time–I suck with titles. The title of my book came pretty easy out of necessity more than anything else. But I struggle with the titles for all the short stories I write. I’m sure I make poor choices most of the time.
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I’m glad I’m not the only one that struggles. I guess it will come to me after I finish editing the first draft 😬
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I guess I’m a bit on the other side when it comes to titles. I love coming up with new titles and I often write short stories from a catchy title or image. However, it is often the case that I’ll change the title after having written the story. And there are too many titles that don’t end up finding the perfect story to match them.
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I don’t want to fall into that category.
Thank you for your contribution 😃
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For me, titles come by pretty easy.
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That’s very convenient for you, it’s a struggle for me 😣
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Sometimes, my titles come to me when I conceive of the idea for the novel, but for my first romance novel, it was titled “Untitled Alien Romance” until I completed the final draft. I ultimately decided on the title Lilith’s Fall, because there was a theme of my character not only falling in love, but also falling from grace in her society due to her love for an alien whose race had been vilified by her people.
The next three titles in the series, Balfor’s Salvation, Jessabelle’s Beast, and Uriale’s Redemption, all came to me pretty quickly because I had an established pattern to follow.
For my first dragon fantasy novel, I wanted it to be The Dragon Princess, but a brief online search revealed that was the name of a very disgusting act as well as a couple of other already published works, so I changed up the wording to be The Princess Dragon (kind of on the same idea of The Princess Bride in that she was a princess and became a dragon). Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the publisher added a possessive to Princess, so the title became The Princess’s Dragon, and I decided to keep it that way because it also fit the story. To date, it’s my best selling title, though I have recently unpublished it to revise it and release a second edition.
I suspect that the best title is one that contains a keyword that people are interested in (like dragon). For example, sometimes I think I would have had better sales on my romances if I had left the title as Untitled Alien Romance, because people seem to be looking for alien romance, and indeed, many of the titles of these romances include alien and romance, as well as abduction, BBW, barbarian, warrior, etc. Instead, I chose a title that spoke to me about the theme of the book. From a marketing standpoint, it might not have been the best choice.
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I guess that is what I am scared of. To produce a title that doesn’t help the marketing or capture the essence of the book.
Thank you for the input and story of your publishing 😃
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I think I try to capture the essence of the book in the title. My fantasy novel is called The Sleighriders. I think a title should maybe have a question about it – something that makes you look twice at the book. Initially I called this book The Elf Girl’s Dream, but somehow it never felt quite right – it sounded too dreamy – which the book isn’t! I republished it as The Sleighriders!
A thought provoking post Douglas!
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I am an unpublished author [aspriring]. I have one story where the first draft is done but a long way off from the final draft. The title sums up what the protagonist is facing throughout the story with others and also with herself in the subplot. The story I am forever struggling with has the same type of title. With both of them, I tried to use words that are interesting and recognizable but are not overused in the media these days. Also, both titles are three words long.
The titles more or less popped into my head once I had a novel summary of sorts written. It could be that it is just word association.
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I had a title floating around for another story, and years after I scrapped that story, I recycled the title. It was a weird process, but it works well for my book!
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I used one title for my book, but changed it when my editor said it didn’t convey what the book was about. The title was Sleeping on Your Front and I changed it to The Girl Who Swapped (it’s about people waking up in different bodies), and I wanted to cash in on the current fashion for ‘Girl’ in book and film titles.
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I’m not published yet, so I don’t know that I can help you. I’ve been working on a novel for years and have had the same working title in mind for it since the beginning. My fear is that a publisher won’t like that title and will insist I change it when or if I ever get to that point.
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That actually happened to me. My publisher suggested I change the title of my book to make it more marketable. My initial instinct was that I was incredibly disappointed. But after I got used to the title, I found that it actually fit my book better – and it definitely helped with its marketability. In some cases, it might be worth it to take their suggestions and not get too emotionally attached to the title. Good luck!
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