Titles are more than just the words that appear on the front cover of your book; effective book titles not only sell more books, they can launch a follow-up series of books while creating a memorable personal brand for the author’s products & services for years to come.
A few weeks ago, I discussed how power of Sarah Susanka’s “Not So Big” brand. This week, I’d like to explore some of the key characteristics that contribute to brand-building book titles.
6 key characteristics of effective nonfiction book titles
Although there is no single “formula” to effective nonfiction book titles, the following 6 key characteristics show up over and over again:
- Promise. Effective book titles are those that promise readers an obvious benefit. In today’s “culture of less,” nonfiction books have to compete for scarce resources, i.e., less time to read, less money to spend, etc. My first best-selling book, Looking Good in Print: A Guide to Basic Design for Desktop Publishing, was an immediate & a lasting success. It’s benefit was obvious, after all, Who wants to look like a fool in print? Competing titles, like Graphic Design for the Electronic Age, didn’t offer readers as obvious a benefit, and its sales suffered.
- Identification. Few books will ever appeal to “everyone.” In every field, there are different expectations and different experience levels. Looking Good in Print targeted newcomers to design, secretaries and administrative assistance who were increasingly given newsletter and brochure production responsibility, even though they did not have any previous design experience. By adding a single word, “Basic,” to Looking Good’s subtitle was enough to build a strong emotional resonance with newcomers to design without “talking down” to them. Today, newcomers turn to the “…for Dummies” or Complete Idiots Guide to… series titles.
- Transparency. Brand-building books often have deceptively simple titles. The best titles have no “creativity” to them, for example, Jill Konrath’s perennially popular Selling to Big Companies or C.J. Hayden’s Get Clients Now! These titles contain common, everyday terms that express the promise without using jargon, fancy or technical terms. My target market was newcomers to design, who were interested in keeping their job–or moving up to greater responsibilities, rather than Design Breakthroughs or Cutting Edge Design. They described their goals as “looking good in print” and, today, many would still use the term searching for help online.
- Metaphor. Metaphor takes transparency to the next level. Metaphors instantly explain and position a book title by referencing popular and cultural terms. Perhaps the best example is Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla Marketing Series, although Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen runs a close second. The power of metaphor is not only that they make titles easier to understand, they also make the titles easier to remember.
- Brevity. Effective titles are often short and transparent, but are backed-up with longer subtitles that explain and provide important detail. For example, Carl Sewall and Paul B. Brown’s Customers for Life: How to Turn that One-Time Buyer into a Lifetime Buyer or Bob Burg’s Endless Referrals: Network Your Everyday Contacts Into Sales. The titles are short, so they can set in a large type size where they’ll attract attention to the subtitle which completes the sales job.
- Specificity. Numbers add credibility and urgency to book titles. Numbers can promise readers faster achievement of their goals, i.e., Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days. Numbers add credibility to goals, i.e., 21 Pounds in 21 Days. Numbers also simplify complex tasks by breaking goal achievement into a series of steps, i.e., Marcia Yudkins 6 Steps to Free Publicity.
How to evaluate your proposed book’s title
Evaluate your proposed book’s title in terms of the above characteristics. Ask yourself questions like these:
- Promise. Does my proposed book title offer readers an obvious and desired promise, or benefit?
- Identification. Have I targeted the title to my most desired reader segment, instead of trying to appeal to “everyone?”
- Transparency. Is the title’s promise expressed using the same everyday language my intended readers use?
- Metaphor. Have I used the story-telling power of a metaphor to instantly communicate my books promise or position it relative to the competition?
- Brevity. Did I use the power of metaphor to bring my book’s proposed title to life and make it more memorable?
- Specificity. Have I reinforced the promise of my book’s title with numbers and specifics that add credibility and promise fast results?
Improve your ability to choose an effective title for your book
The best way to improve your ability to come up with the “perfect” title, the one that creates a personal brand for yourself and brands a line of follow-up products and services, is to train yourself to analyze the titles of books in your field as well as outside your field.
Create a list of the top titles in your field, and analyze them in terms of the above 6 questions. Rate their performance, and score the titles.
Don’t just analyze the titles of books in your field, occasionally visit a different field, and apply the 6 questions to those books, too.
The more you examine the titles of existing books, the easier it will be for you to come up with the perfect title for your books.
