The Title of Your Book

Why the wrong title brings the wrong readers (and bad reviews).

Your title carries everything, whether we like it or not.

It sits there on the cover, doing work you can't see. Someone scrolls past in three seconds. They either stop or they don't.

The title has to do three things at once. Tell people what they're getting. Show up when they search. Sound good enough that they want it.

No need to come up with a title that captures everything the book contains. That would be quite impossible. Just capturing what the reader needs is everything we can do, while reflecting the book.

Your subtitle does the explaining bit. Your title does the stopping.

When I scroll through the popular books on Amazon, they have big titles in common. Most people see your book as a thumbnail first. If they can't read the title in that tiny space, they're likely to check out the book displayed next to it.

The keywords matter, but not the way you think. You're trying to help people find what they're already looking for. If someone searches for morning routines and your book is about morning routines, the title ideally contains those words or synonyms.

Bad reviews often come from the wrong people finding your book. They bought it expecting one thing, got another. The title either promised too much, but more likely, promised the wrong thing.

Getting the title right means some people won't click. You want the people who actually feel drawn to what you wrote.

The title, these few words (or even just one), they need to feel alive for you to write about it. You can be smart about it. You adjust the words because what you first chose might confuse people. But if you can't view it as the container that carries aliveness for you, it might lose meaning for both.

You don't know when the title is done. You just know when it's good enough. There'll probably be many title options that would fit your book perfectly. You can be playful, paradoxical, creative, simplistic. Anything could work. Once decided, you're likely not changing it a month after. But with self-publishing, it's not set in stone either.

I've changed titles on later editions, even though the book stayed the same. You just try to capture the book as appealingly as possible.

Let the title find you. Write your book, check out related books, talk about it to others.