Tips for choosing your novel’s title

I have written before about how important your cover is but even more important is the title you give your masterpiece. Choosing the title for your book can be one of the hardest decisions. You want the title to be catchy enough to intrigue a reader and short so it doesn’t fill up the entire front cover. Your title is part of the overall impression about the book. It sets the tone and creates an expectation.

In other words, the title is VERY important and you shouldn’t just pick the first title you can think of. You need to spend a lot of time making sure you have the best title. Remember the title is a sales tool. It allows the reader to know something about your book. Your title needs to paint a picture for your prospective reader. 

Now some people know their titles when they begin writing, but others wait to complete their work before deciding on a title. Either way works as long as the title is appropriate.

Here are a few tips about selecting a title.

Length – choose a short title – preferably six words or less. It might help to pretend the title will be on a billboard. Would a driver going 65+ miles per hour be able to glance over and comfortably read it? Besides not taking up a lot of room on the cover, short titles are easier to remember.

Make it easy to pronounce – Shy away from foreign or made-up words because these don’t give the person picking up your book any idea of what it is about. A title won’t tug at the reader if they can’t pronounce or understand the words.

Make it relevant – Ensure that your book title actually has something to do with what’s between the covers. Readers don’t like to be tricked.

See how popular the title is – Go onto Amazon and type in your title. See how many other books come up with that same title. Yes, I know you can’t necessarily have a name that no one has used before but if tons of books come up with the same name, you may want to consider something a little more unique. There are lots of books called The Search, but I went ahead and named my short story this because it fit the book so well.

I will say that when I wrote my first book, I had plans to call it The Elemental. But when I finished it and realized the story would become a trilogy, I switched the title to the name of the whole trilogy. It didn’t take me long to decide Summoned was a good title. Hey, it is short, easy to pronounce, very relevant and when searched on Amazon, there were not many books with just the world Summoned.

So when deciding on your title – take your time and choose one that will help you sell your book. If you want more tips on how to select your title, check out this website.