Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

What’s in a book name?

People judge a book by its cover and that includes the book’s title. A good name will be highly influential in helping your book succeed.

Its easy to compare a book cover to advertising. It certainly is critical to your book’s success. If the cover (including the book title) isn’t right then readership will suffer.

A book title is a little like an advertisement headline, or a sign.

What’s wrong  with this sign? Is the word “Koala” a proper noun/brand name or a common noun? The rendering in all-capitals makes it even more confusing. No wonder the Mexican Shop has gone out of business. Not only aren’t there many Mexicans in Australia but the thought of cooking those cute Koalas in a specialised oven is repulsive to 99.9% of Australia’s population. I’ve taken this to the extreme, but I’m sure most will get my point.

Authors need to think their book titles through.

Some simple suggestions include:

• Simplicity /brevity (you can have a one word title or just the name of the main protagonist) e.g. Wilf
• Use literary devices like alliteration e.g. The Good Food Cook Book or use  double entendre (but be careful with this device because for some a double entendre is hard to decode)
• Involving – your can involve the reader by asking a question e.g. Can you fly?
• Solving a problem e.g. How to fix a credit card problem
• Evocative – not telling the whole story but evoking a feeling, emotion or  generating intrigue e.g. Smoking Gun

Having said all this if you have an Amazon book marketing strategy, then some of the advice above doesn’t apply.

Amazon for books (like websites) is driven by keywords. Keywords are more than “king”. They are also queen, prince and princess – they are everything! If you have an Amazon-first book marketing strategy then you’ll ideally have a book title that contains category relevant keywords. We can provide an Amazon strategy consultancy that will give your book real hope of being an Amazon book-marketing champion.