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How to Craft a Better Book Title

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A great book title is one of the first marketing tools in the publishing toolbox. Crafting an effective book title — one that entices as many readers as possible to the book — can be as complex as any other product naming task. The goal is to pull people in with the title — and ultimately, to sell more books. 

And while book title generator tools may be able to spit out some great brainstorming ideas,  the truth is there’s no automated substitute for the process. It takes a human touch to know and understand who the potential readers for the book are, what value the book is providing them, and how to communicate that value in just a few words of title and subtitle.

How to create a book title: the basics

Titling a book was a big subject for me when I was running TheBalanceCareers Book Publishing Site. Here are a two articles I wrote for on how to develop a great title…

A book naming process case study

Taken from my time at a cookbook publisher, here’s an example of how a publishing team of editors and marketing folks and the author’s team turned a just-OK book title into a powerful title and subtitle combination that greatly expanded the potential market for the book.

So… a book proposal came into the house with a title that basically relayed its subject matter: Kosher Vegetarian Cooking, by Gil Marks. It was a collection of — you guessed it — vegetarian cooking for those who also keep kosher, from a variety of traditional sources. 

Does the title address the main market for the book?

Now, this is a straightforward book title that certainly speaks to its market — that is, people who:

  1. Don’t eat meat (a good sized book market these days) and
  2. Keep kosher (a much more limited market)

The intersection of kosher vegetarians felt like a limited market. The original book title spoke to kosher vegetarian cookbook buyers, but it almost felt like it was excluding others and limited the market. 

How to expand  the market reach? It would be hard with the existing title.

Would a great subtitle help? 

An explanatory or engaging subtitle might help, but it wouldn’t solve the whole problem.

Consider a subtitle like: “Great meatless dishes anyone can enjoy”. It still wouldn’t quite have the marketing “oomph” to overcome the majority of non-vegetarian, non-kosher cookbook buyers’ impression that “This book isn’t for me.”

What title could broaden the readers who might also enjoy the book?

With the goal of expanding the market, those involved with the book’s development dug deep into the text and the philosophies behind the book and brainstormed and did market research into the competition (see “human touch” above). 

A quote from the Bible was pulled out of the text:

“A land of wheat and barley, of grape vines and fig trees and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey . . . you shall eat and be satisfied.”?—Deut. 8:8-10

Deconstructed, some of the thinking that went into the titling process:

  • Wheat and barley sound… a little too “whole grain cookbook”
  • “Fig trees and pomegranates” was a combination perhaps a little too purely exotic to go wide — in addition, pomegranates were were having “a foodie moment”, which meant maybe the title might not age as well into the backlist.

And the winning book title is… 

After many meetings and much deliberation, the title was determined to be: Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World.

Instead of limiting the book market, this evocative and lovely cookbook title brings to mind luscious ingredients. The subtitle provides an explanation and honors the cultural and religious heritage of the contents while it suggests the communal importance food and the promises of delicious recipes. Even the word “treasury” suggests value.

This delicious book title would bring the book to a much broader audience, like: 

  • People who eat olives and honey — ingredients that are in wide usage and that have shown no signs of abating in popularity in the past few thousand years.
  • The larger Jewish community that doesn’t keep kosher.
  • Cookbook lovers of all kinds who are interested in recipe collections.
  • People interested in world food history.
  • And, of course, kosher vegetarians.

Olive Trees and Honey: A Treasury of Vegetarian Recipes from Jewish Communities Around the World went on to win a James Beard Foundation Cookbook Award and to become a IACP Cookbook Award finalist.

Would Kosher Vegetarian Cooking have done the same?

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Need a quick hit of book publishing advice about your title—or anything else? Check out the Book Strategy Quickie for a robust sampling of ContentMeant’s expertise—at a reasonable price—focused on moving your work or your marketing forward.

Content Marketing as… Party Conversation?

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Content marketing is the “show don’t sell” of promotion, based on communication of useful information and mutual discovery.

For your prospect: Is this service or author’s work right for me?

For you, the service provider or author: Am I targeting the right audience?

I like to think of content marketing as beginning like a party conversation, one that helps create more meaningful relationships.

Content marketing is “show, don’t sell.”

One common beginner content marketing mistake is to assume a “sales pitch” is “content.” This is not only incorrect but can actually be harmful to the content marketing effort.

Here’s what I mean:

Imagine you’re at a friend huge bash of a party and a friend of the host, Georgina, accosts you with, “Hey, I know you have a dog. Did you know I take dog portraits?”

Georgina shoves her card at you, “Give me your information. It’s time for holiday dog photos. I’ll text you tomorrow and follow up. We can set up an appointment.”

Now, Georgina might be the most brilliant pet photographer that ever snapped a pooch but chances are, after that interaction, in the future you’ll be ducking behind the ficus tree to avoid her.

How the conversation should happen

Imagine you’re at the same party, petting the host’s dog Rufus. Georgina approaches you and comments on the delicious hors d’oeuvres as Rufus tries to grab them. You mention your own dog’s fondness for table scraps and Georgina says, “My dog, too. I can manage other people’s dogs when I take their portraits, but…”

Oh? Dog portraits?

“Yes, in fact” — she points — “I took those pictures of Rufus, there. Here’s my card — if you’re planning on taking pictures of your dog for holiday cards, have hints on my website about how to take great pet photos.” Georgina then tells a funny anecdote about her latest client, a French bulldog …

You don’t need a pet portrait but…

… now you have a rapport with Georgina, you’ve seen examples of her work. You go to her website — cute pet portraits! And there’s a picture of Rufus! You sign up for her newsletter, you take her up on that bit of free professional pet photo advice on the website… it’s harder than it looks.

And then your cousin calls and tells you she’s just adopted two pedigree pugs from the same litter and she’s going to try to pimp them out as twin pug clothing models and they need a portfolio…

And you mention Georgina and forward her the latest newsletter …

Content marketing translation

The big bash is the content-marketing universe — at first, it seems overwhelming and amorphous.

But content marketing customer behavior (akin to your obvious fondness for dogs in the party example) sends signals. By interacting and engaging and using hashtags, people reveal their interests, their likes and dislikes.

Social media casts a wide net. In order to get the most out of it, you need to “listen” and interact and learn as well as “put out” your message.

An email lead nurturing campaign creates a relationship where there is meant to be one. This warms potential clients up to your services, warms readers up to your voice. It helps everyone get to know each other (the regular content selection and reader clicks reveal insights) and what you’re offering. The campaign also leads people to…

Your all-important website gives deeper information about product and service offerings — and gives all potential clients “social proof” —  examples of work and client testimonials — which (like Georgina’s IRL portrait of Rufus), gives an idea of your pricing and reveals whether vendor and client are a fit.

Regular email newsletters keep your clients or audiences in touch. This includes both you reaching out to them – and you getting insights on the backend to gauge their interest level.

Search-engine optimized blog posts keep the conversation fresh, keeps you “discoverable” by search engines.

A targeted content marketing strategy helps efficiently and effectively create and deploy the above-mentioned tools — social media posts, blog posts, newsletters and lead nurturing sequences are at the tip of the content-berg. Other content delivery methods include video, podcasts — even live events, etc. — each has their own unique capabilities and advantages, which need to be geared to the audiences you want to reach.

A strategy will help turn casual “party conversations” into deeper client and audience relationships.

Do you need a content marketing strategy?

A ContentMeant content marketing strategy can help focus and augment whatever resources you currently have with a plan that will maximize the efficiency of your staff’s or your own efforts.

Get in touch to learn more.

photo credit: AnnMarie Spinella

Writing Habits of the Pros

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So many elements of the writer’s life are filled with uncertainty — not the least of which is the writers schedule. There is no “9 to 5”, no universally  prescribed hours — and every writer has different hours of peak productivity, different temptations keeping them from the keyboard.

I myself occasionally find myself joining the ranks of the #5amwriters on Twitter – not always at 5am in my own Eastern time zone 😉 And always with large quantities of caffeine.

Because I struggle to stick to a consistent writing practice, I’m always curious about how other writers structure their days, how they are able to log hours at the keyboard, how they manage to get to the finish line.

Here’s a list of some of my writerly heroes and the habits, tips and wisdom that enable/d them to move their creative projects forward.

Steven Pressfield – fight Resistance

From one of my favorite creative life gurus, Steven Pressfield, comes the nugget that informs all others: “The battle must be fought every day.” Pressfield is the author of the seminal  The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, which refers to the life distractions that prevent one from applying butt to chair as Resistance. As those forces are legion, for a writer to be successful, they must be reckoned with and overcome every single day.

Jerry Seinfeld – “Don’t break the chain.”

As I sometimes write humor, this advice from the iconic Seinfeld (via Lifehacker) has stuck with me — it doesn’t require a set schedule, only an “unbroken” mindset. 

According to this master of his comedy domain, “The way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day.” To facilitate that, Seinfeld suggests (bullets mine) …

  • “Get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on the wall where you can see it.
  • Every day you write, put a big red X over that day.
  • After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day.
  • You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt.
  • Your only job next is to not break the chain.
  • DON’T BREAK THE CHAIN.”
Your only job next is to not break the chain. (from Seinfeld via Giphy)

Erma Bombeck – set disciplined hours

My earliest years were influenced by reading Bombeck’s hugely popular syndicated humor column “At Wit’s End” in our newspaper. According to her bio, “at the height of her popularity, 900 newspapers syndicated her column to an audience of 30 million people.” As the best-selling author of numerous books, she was also a frequent guest on many television talk shows.

Bombeck reported that she wrote from 8:00 – 11:30 a.m. and 1:30-5:00 p.m. “five, six, seven days a week. I don’t see how I can do any less… If you’re a professional writer, you write.

“You write whether you feel like it, you write whether you’ve got an idea, you write whether it’s Pulitzer Prize material. You just do it, that’s it. Discipline is what we’re all about…

“Writing has to be a priority—there comes a time when you have to stop talking and start doing.”

Erma Bombeck knew what she was talking about. (The Simpsons via Giphy)

Discipline likely kept her productive during her appearance schedule (something to aspire to, no?). The writer’s spirit lives on in the biannual Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference at the University of Dayton in Ohio, her alma mater. 

Anne Lamott – write shitty first drafts

Many writers are already familiar with the amazing Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  Lamott’s writer dad, Kenneth Lamott, wrote every day from 5:30 to ~7:30am; made breakfast & read the paper, then wrote for the rest of the morning – she passes down the advice re: writing (bullets mine):

  • “Do it every day for awhile.
  • Do it as you would scales on the piano.
  • Do it by prearrangement with yourself.
  • Do it as a debt of honor.
  • And make a commitment to finishing things.”

But for those who sometimes have trouble getting started because of perfectionism or other psych-the-writer-self-out headgames, my favorite piece of advice from Lamott is  “… write really, really shitty first drafts.”

Stephen J. Cannell – rewrite + always finish

You get nothing from an unfinished project, and you learn nothing! Finish everything you start!

Stephen J. Cannell

The late, and very prolific television writer/producer worked on and/or created some of the most iconic procedural crime shows — Columbo, Ironsides, The Rockford Files, to name a few.

This man had dyslexia folks, and wrote 5:00 – 11:00 a.m. nearly every day and purportedly felt guilty not writing even while acting, or vacationing, etc. These from him:

  • “It is very important to write at the same time every day, two hours at the minimum.
  • Keep going and your talent will grow, but you have to be at the keyboard for that to happen.
  • Give yourself permission to be bad [aka “shitty first drafts redux”] — rewriting is part of the process.”
(NBC Universal TV via Giphy)

But the most interesting piece of advice Cannell emphatically gave is…

“Choose your projects carefully (something you love, something that will work), but NO QUITTING! You get nothing from an unfinished project, and you learn nothing! Finish everything you start!”

When we hit a bump and are tempted to gravitate towards the “shiny object” of a new and (for the moment) easier project, Cannell’s words are worth taking to the keyboard. 

Ellen Sandler – create your writer’s identity

The television writer,  TV consultant/coach and author of The TV Writer’s Workbook: A Creative Approach To Television Scripts, echoes much of what others have said, but reinforces some important points. She writes (not necessarily in this order):

“YOU HAVE TO WRITE. A LOT…

“Develop the muscles to write even when you have a lot of other demands on you… Writing, if you are a writer, is as much a part of your life as eating.

Write something even if you’re tired. Write even if you don’t really want to. Write instead of watching TV, answering emails, watching YouTube, twittering, shopping online for discount cosmetics… You develop the discipline to write when you can’t.”

“Most importantly: Be willing to WRITE BADLY…

Write when you have nothing to say; write until you find something to say. By writing all the time, you create your writer’s identity.

In a couple of months…you’ll have something finished. Once you’ve written something, you have to write something else… and something else.

“There is no other way.”

Save the cat… oh, wait. That’s advice for something else. But while we’re looking at Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot… (20th Century Fox, via Giphy)

Isaac Asimov – send it out + persist

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer.”

Isaac Asimov

For those who write and write but show the words only under duress or maybe not at all, iconic science fiction author Asimov has this advice:

“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. 
You send that work out again and again, while you’re 
working on another one.

“If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”

Jane Austen – write on

There is comfort in the fact that the writer’s struggles are not new, so take a page from the playbook of “the greatest novelist in the English language.” More than two hundred years ago Jane Austen learned that she, like Steven Pressfield after her, had to fight Resistance. She wrote in a letter to her sister Cassandra:

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.”

Jane Austen
When I’m not in a humor for writing, I find that caffeine helps.
(from BBC Pride & Prejudice via Giphy)

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Agatha Christie – the World’s Best-Selling Author

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Agatha Christie (September 15, 1890 – January 12, 1976) is the world’s most bestselling author. A woman whose mother didn’t want her to read until she was eight, who claimed to have had no early ambition as a writer, wrote books that have sold over a billion copies in English and another billion in translation. 

Agatha Christie’s Book Publishing Accomplishments

Christie is best known for her 66 detective novel mysteries but wrote additional novels under the pen name of Mary Westmacott non-detective novels (sometimes considered “romance”, but they do not strictly adhere to the conventions of that genre).

Christie was also a playwright; she penned 15 stage plays including Mousetrap, the longest continuously running play in history. Mousetrap opened in the West End of London in 1952, logged its 25,000 performance in November 2012, and is still performed.

Agatha Christie’s Early Life – Reading and Writing

Agatha Christie was born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, South West England to a somewhat eccentric British mother, Clara Boehmer, and a wealthy American father, Frederick Alvah Miller.

Far younger than her siblings, Agatha taught herself to read by the age of five and read broadly even at a early age — everything from Edith Nesbit’s The Railway Children and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to poetry to “startling thrillers from America.”

Agatha was home-schooled mostly by her father, whose business interests suffered throughout her childhood, as did his health (perhaps as a consequence of his financial difficulties).

As a child, Agatha wrote poems and her first was printed in a newspaper when she was eleven years old. She was quoted as saying she’d had a very happy childhood but also that her childhood ended when her father passed away – also when she was eleven.

After Frederick’s death, Clara and Agatha struggled financially.  In her mid-teens, Christie boarded at various pensions in France to “finish” her education with music, language, and other skills. By her late teens she’d published more poems and had written a number of short stories. When she was about twenty, she and her mother spent three months in Cairo — a hot vacation spot for upper class British — for financial reasons, to improve her mother’s ill health and to shore up her own marital prospects.

Agatha’s Firsts

After a number of suitors and a broken engagement, Agatha married her first husband, aviator Archie Christie on Christmas Eve 1914. However, they were both embroiled in World War I duties — he in France, her at a Red Cross dispensary in Torquay.

Husband away, bored with her dispensary duties, Agatha Christie wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles partly on a bet with her older sister Madge that she couldn’t do it.

Archie was assigned to the War Office in London in 1918 and he and Agatha began living together for the first time. In 1919, at the end of the war, Archie got a job in London and Agatha gave birth to their first and only child, Rosalind.

In 1919, Agatha was offered her first book deal as John Lane of The Bodley Head contracted not only The Mysterious Affair at Styles but five additional books, as well.

The Original Gone Girl?

A confluence of sad events — her mother’s death, Archie’s unfaithfulness to their marriage and request for a divorce, and writer’s burnout — may have contributed to the real-life mystery of Agatha Christie’s disappearance for 11 days in 1926.

Leaving her Rosalind with her secretary, Agatha took off and abandoned her car.  The search for the missing author caused a huge public sensation and made the front page of the New York Times. Christie was discovered to have checked herself into a hotel in Surrey under the surname of Archie’s mistress and was diagnosed with amnesia. However, there is some evidence that she planned the disappearance to embarrass Archie.

Did Christie pioneer disappearing to teach your husband a lesson?
[@foxhomeent via @giphy]

But the writer ultimately divorced, then remarried in 1930 to Max Mallowan, an archeologist 14 years her junior. Their travels together contributed to her book research.

Grand Master of the mystery genre and quite a Dame

The 1930s and 1940s were prolific ones for Christie. In 1955, Agatha Christie was the recipient of the first Grand Master honor at the Edgar Awards sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. In 1971, she was awarded the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Christie’s works on film and TV

This “Belgian gent” remains incredibly popular.   [via @giphy]

Agatha Christie’s works have been adapted for the screen since 1928. Her classic novels—such as like Murder on the Orient Express—and iconic characters have enjoyed numerous adaptations. Belgian detective Hercule Poirot has been interpreted by stars ranging from Tony Randall to Albert Finney to John Malkovich and Miss Marple has been played by Helen Hayes, Angela Lansbury, Dame Margaret Rutherford and (notably in hit films from 1974 – 1982) Joan Hickson.

The passing of two icons

The death of Hercule Poirot was marked by an obituary in The New York Times on August 6, 1975—the only fiction character that the paper thus honored.  Dame Agatha Christie herself passed away half a year later on January 12, 1976 at the age of 85.

Though Christie died nearly 50 years ago, she maintains her status as the world’s best-selling writer.

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Want to emulate Agatha Christie but need some book publishing advice? Check out the Resources & Quick Solutions to learn about ContentMeant’s offerings for authors.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links relevant to the content. Purchases made through those links, which are distinguished from other links by their bold typeface may result in a small commission to ContentMeant at no extra cost to the buyer.

Bookish Definition: Remainder

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A remainder is a book that has been sold by the publisher at a deep discount to clear out inventory due to weak sales or overprinting.

“Remainder” is also a verb that refers to this process, as in: “My first novel was remaindered” or “We’re remaindering most of the hardcover stock before the paperback is published.”

Publishers generally review their lists on a periodic basis and make the decision to eliminate or reduce stock on titles whose sales numbers are low compared to their inventory quantity.  Remaindering books cuts down on warehousing and management costs.

Remaindered titles are generally offered for sale at a greatly reduced price to booksellers (like Barnes & Noble or Daedalus Books) who sell them directly to the public. Alternately, the publisher might sell them in bulk to “remainder houses,” who then sort and resell them to various vendors. (Remainder dealers have their own trade show, the Chicago International Remainders and Overstock Book Expo — aka CIROBE).

Remainders generally carry some sort of mark (generally visible on the bottom of the pages when the book is closed), so that booksellers cannot sell it at full price. 

In most contracts with traditional book publishers, before remaindering a book the publisher is obligated to contact the author and offer copies of the book for sale to the author at the deeply discounted remainder price.  

Though the remainder business is a thriving part of bookselling, once a book is “remaindered,” authors don’t receive royalties on sales of the remaindered, physical books. 

In bricks-and-mortar bookstores, remainders are generally sold in the “Bargain” section. It’s not uncommon for books from best-selling authors to be remaindered, due to overprinting. 

Remainder trivia: According to the New York Times, just before author Gilbert King heard that he’d won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Devil in the Grove (about a Thurgood Marshall case), he’d gotten a notice from his publisher that the book had been remaindered.