Hints For Getting Your Book Noticed – Coming Up With A Great Title

A Great Title May Not Get Your Book Published, but It Can Certainly Help Get Your Story Noticed
When I was recently asked to write an article on how to come up with a great title for a book, it would have been easy to suggest that someone should craft a great story first. But Gone With The Wind, The Sun Also Rises, The Sound And The Fury, and The Power And The Glory would’ve been exceptional books regardless of their titles. So would The Magic Mountain, An American Tragedy, Ship Of Fools, and Atlas Shrugged. But in both groups, only Ship Of Fools would’ve been a certain match for someone browsing the shelves of a library for something to read, since the story did indeed take place on a ship on which a lot of foolish people had embarked.
An Author’s First Responsibility Should be to Identify the Story’s Most Significant Element
Just as many writers have difficulty recognizing the genre in which their story is written, authors are often perplexed at how to express their story in terms that clearly relate its unique characteristics. If a writer works on this skill, and anyone who has any hope of becoming published must do this, channel this presentation into a ten second elevator pitch, since you’ll need to perfect one of these too. In these ten seconds, you’ll likely have spoken 15 to 20 words. Assuming you’ve toiled long and hard to craft your short presentation, what is the message?
Use the Power Point in the Elevator Pitch to Create Your Title
Since you’ve now analyzed your story to its most definitive level, something in the story has motivated you to come up with a powerful spit of rhetoric that says it all. Your story is brilliantly conceived and Fitzgerald should only have written as well. Now remember your favorite novels and think about the story lines and the titles. Look at your manuscript in the same way and imagine what would best reflect the words you wrote.
Kansas Flash might not be about University of Kansas and Chicago Bears football great Gayle Sayers, but the life of a county fair huckster who became a phony tent evangelist and then really turned to God (a modern-day Beckett); THE CRUMBLED HEART, instead of romance or horror, could be a story of the inability of a child prodigy to attain expected greatness; THE BITTER TASTE OF SWEET SUCCESS might tell the tale of a character like Harry Angstrom in the RABBIT series.
Keep in Mind that Your Publisher Will Have the Final Say
I happened to check Amazon for each of the three titles I just made up and none of them were listed. I suggest doing the same (and with your local library) with whatever you create. This is especially important if your title matches or impinges on another author’s in the same genre in which you are writing. This happened to me twice in five years, so this is one subject I can relate to from personal experience and wish I couldn’t. And remember that no matter how good you think your title might be, the publisher may suggest or even require something different.