Dear Diary,
According to Lambert Klein and Amy McDaniel,
The Power of Kindle Books: Selling and Marketing Your Ebooks for Residual Income – Promoting Sales
the next thing to think about is a catchy title. An author wants his/her book to stand out from the rest, and clever titles can help make the sale.
Although there is some great advice on titles for fictional works, I’m trying to concentrate on a non-fiction how-to book, so I’ll just use their advice on those.
Let’s see… “How To” is always good to use in the title of a how-to book. OK. A bit obvious. But there are different ways to use that “how to.” It can be part of the title itself, or it can be part of the subtitle. So, a possible main title use might be, How to Survive Your Dissertation and Keep Your Sanity. Using it in a subtitle might read, The Dissertation Process: How to Survive From Problem Statement through Final Defense. OK. the latter is a bit long for my taste, but it doesn’t seem to be too long compared to other titles out there.
Another title type might be by what Klein calls making a promise to the prospective reader. So I might come up with a title like, Your Dissertation in One Page a Day, or The 2-Month Dissertation. However, if the promise doesn’t deliver, I’ve lost a reader and possibly a recommendation.
Another selling title approach for how-to books is to share a secret. So something like, The Secret to a Successful Dissertation, or Little-Known Dissertation Facts, or What Your Dissertation Committee Is Not Telling You.
Clearly, there’s a lot of thinking that goes into creating a title, including researching ebook sites to see what titles are already being used and what’s selling. I have to remember that the catchiest title can draw sales. As with researching the market for your subject (see Day 4), Klein again suggests Google AdSense (see Day 5) to use frequently used search words and phrases in your title. So much to remember…
My task for today is to come up with a title for my prospective book. Meanwhile, I also need to write the it, although I’m getting the distinct idea that all this research should be done before a book is actually written, so the author can write a best-seller for a niche that needs the information.
Well, Diary, today’s post was short and, hopefully, sweet.
Now it’s back to work!
Write of Passage 