Skip to main content

The Effect of Titles by Mary Deal


Your story title is the first word or words a person sees when looking for a book to read. Yes, they see the cover, but the title is the first bit of information they read. What if your title is...

uninteresting
a bit offensive
similar to so many others
doesn’t give a clue about the plot

Those are just a few instances where an author can lose a sale before the book is opened for perusal; before the prospective buyer flips the book to read the back cover.
In selecting either paper books to buy or eBooks to download, we can now read a percentage of the book, either the first few chapters or we can jump to various pages therein. When perusing sites that offer downloadable books, the same problems occur in identifying about which story to learn more. If a title and cover on that site doesn’t appeal to you, do you bother to read the blurbs describing the eBook? Do you read the first chapters that have been made available in an attempt to capture your interest?
Many writers do not think through the meaning of their titles. As a result, it’s difficult to determine anything about the plot. Some solutions could be:
Use a very short phrase that tells the theme.
Down to the Needle is the title of one of my novels. It’s about an innocent young woman facing lethal injection for a crime she didn’t do. The case goes all the way into the lethal injection chamber. When something keeps happening until the last possible moment,  in ordinary speech we use a cliché, saying it goes down to the wire. Knowing the story is a thriller, Down to the Needle tells the one perusing to buy a mystery that this story is either about the needle (drugs) or lethal injection, or both. If that incites their interest, they then read the book blurb and learn the gist of the plot.

You can use a wee bit of great dialogue for a title.
Remember the best seller, Who Moved my Cheese? That was a one-liner throughout the book and made a prospective buyer think about what the content might be about. A phrase that makes a person wonder about the inside of the book is a great title.
How many times in a book store, when looking for a great new read, have you looked at all the titles in a row. Only the spines are turned out. You pass on many until you find an interesting title. That, in itself, proves the value of using a phrase that incites curiosity.
Titles need to be thought carefully through. Titles can cause the shopper to investigate further or buy, or it can cause a person to move on to something that seems more interesting. Test this premise yourself the next time you look for a new read.


Mary Deal Bio:

            LINK TO AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE: 

           LINK TO SMASHWORDS AUTHOR PAGE: 




Author, Painter, Photographer
Eric Hoffer Book Award Winner
National Indie Excellence Book Awards Finalist (past)
Pushcart Prize Nominee
Global eBook Awards Nominee
2014 National Indie Excellence Book Awards Finalist
Global eBook Awards Bronze
Global eBook Awards Silver
Art Gallery: http://www.MaryDealFineArt.com
Gift Gallery: zazzle.com/IslandImageGallery*


 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MARGARET FIELAND INTERVIEW (guest blogger)

When did you first know you were destined to be a writer? LOL, I never realized I was destined to be a writer -- I fell into it. I'd written poetry for years, collecting it in notebooks stacked in my attic when I wrote one I wanted to keep. This led me to several online sites and ultimately to discovering the Muse Online Writers Conference where I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson and joined her writers forums. She required everyone to write both fiction and poetry, so, with much trepidation, I started writing fiction. Then I got hooked on it, wrote a chapter book, took the ICL course and actually learned how to write it. Then in 2010, I was seized by a desire to write a sci fi novel, so I spent six weeks or so on world building, mostly, with a bit of plotting thrown in for good measure. Who would you cite as your influences? I'm a way-back sci-fi fan, and Robert A. Heinlein influenced me heavily. I took a lot away from his writing, notably the value of surpris...
6 comments
Read more

A Tip for Authors: What to Put on the Back Cover of a Book

If you have accomplished the arduous task of writing a book, you may not embrace the job of choosing what to put on your book's back cover. Maybe you think that a short biography, along with a few endorsements should suffice. Actually the material on the back cover can carry out its intended job, without the presence of a two or three line bio. It does pay to highlight any endorsements you have received from experts within the industry, or from recognized members of government or society. Still, you may not have on file an endorsement that can stir up the emotions in a potential reader. Yet you have little reason to hope that the reader of the rear covering piece will elect to look at the pages between the covers, if you fail to trigger that same person's emotions. With that fact in mind, you must consider what emotions might push a book lover to purchase the publication that bears your name. Maybe that potential reader feels challeng...
Post a Comment
Read more

Those S and ES Endings by Mary Deal

These endings have always troubled me until I finally decided to get it right. Compare the versions and pick out the correct usages in this name ending with the letter s . The Joneses came for dinner. The Jones’s came for dinner. The Jones came for dinner. John Joneses car stalled. John Jones car stalled. John Jones’s car stalled. That Jones’s girl. That Joneses girl. That Jones girl. The correct sentences are: The Joneses came for dinner. John Jones’s car stalled. That Jones girl. Some tips: When a name ends with an s, and when speaking of the family as a group, add es , as in Joneses. When speaking about something John Jones owned, it is his property and, therefore, an apostrophe and s shows ownership, as in Jones’s . When speaking about a person in the singular, use only the name Jones. However, when speaking about a group of girls all named Jones, you would write that sentence: The Jones girls . Notice that the name stays...
2 comments
Read more