How to Come Up With a Title

That makes me instantly want to read your book

Never judge a book by its cover goes the saying, yet of course we all do. And not just by its cover – by its title. You know the books you have instantly wanted to read just from the few short words that make up its name, the ones which feel as if the title encapsulates everything about it, and which feel as if they could never be known by anything else. That is what we’re aiming for when we’re thinking of titles for a novel.

In my time in Big Five publishers, I published – and so was responsible for the titles of – over a hundred books. I fed into the titles of many more. In the process I must have brainstormed thousands of titles, because every book had a list of several which were considered but never used.

It’s worth saying here that nearly all the books I published had their titles changed from the title the author originally submitted them under – I can think of only a couple which didn’t off the top of my head, though quite possibly there were others. Here’s the thing: the title has to do an awful lot of work. All a reader has to go off when choosing a book is the title and cover (and possibly the author, if it’s a brand name). Then they’ll look at the back-cover copy and possibly read a page or two – but they aren’t going to do that if the title and cover didn’t draw them in. Often authors would say to me, ‘my title is perfect because when you read the book the title refers to X and Y’, and I would agree that there is something intensely satisfying about a title which has extra meaning to it when you’ve read the book.

But it has to make you want to read the book first.

The same is true whether you are self-publishing or querying agents, though your ‘reader’ is different. I read every submission I am sent as an agent, and I did the same as an editor – but they find their way to the top of my to-read pile an awful lot faster if the title makes them sound like a book I really want to read. And if it sounds like a book which I know I can sell – if I can already picture the cover and imagine the back-cover copy and know who the readership is – then I’m already on page one.

If you’re querying agents and/or publishers, the wrong title isn’t going to sink your submission. But a good one can really help make it fly.

Also, and I swear I am boring myself by how much I bang on about this too, thinking about your title the way I am going to suggest you do forces you to think about the hook of your book too. And if I haven’t persuaded you yet that knowing the hook of your book, what it is really about and who it’s for and how you will persuade readers to read it, then perhaps this post will do it.

So here are some thoughts on titles: what works, what doesn’t, how to brainstorm, how to test.