I Suck At Picking Book Titles

By Beth Groundwater

Okay, I'm fessing up. I really suck at picking book titles. Thank goodness others have stepped in to suggest better titles for me. My first title boo-boo was for the book that is now titled A Real Basket Case. Since the protagonist is a gift basket designer in her menopausal late forties and she was suffering from the empty nest and mid-life marital malaise, I titled the manuscript Mid-life Crisis. Boring! I queried multiple literary agents and none were the slightest bit interested.

Then an astute critique partner suggested that I focus on the cozy craft series potential for the manuscript and give it a title related to the sleuth's occupation. So, title attempt number two was Basket Case. After making some other changes, the most important being moving chapter three forward to be chapter one, I hooked my first agent, who sold the book, and the series, to Five Star Publishing. Then I went looking for similar mystery titles on Amazon and found Carl Hiaason's Basket Case and Ralph McInerny's Basket Case. I wasn't going to try to compete with those two! So, after some brain-storming with my Five Star editor, we settled on the title of A Real Basket Case.

After a successful title pick with the second book in the Claire Hanover gift basket designer series, To Hell in a Handbasket, I was back in the dog house with another lame choice. This was for the first book in my now-titled RM Outdoor Adventures series, which my second agent sold to Midnight Ink (who then promptly picked up my Claire Hanover series, too). I thought alliteration would be interesting, so I titled the first book (released as Deadly Currents) as Wicked Whitewater and the second book as Evil Eddies.

Midnight Ink’s sales staff nixed those titles for a couple of reasons. First, they felt alliterative titles were more for cozy mystery series, not soft-boiled series. Second, with my proposed series name (the Whitewater River Ranger series), the blurb for the first book would have been, “Wicked Whitewater, the first book in the Whitewater River Ranger series written by Beth Groundwater.” There were just too many “waters” in that! After asking my editor three times if Beth Groundwater was my real name and if I was willing to use an alias (yes and no), they changed it to “Deadly Currents, the first book in the RM Outdoor Adventures series written by Beth Groundwater.”

Again, I managed to squeak out a winning title for the second book in the series. I kept the Wicked and the Eddies and tacked those two together to be the title of my May release, Wicked Eddies. But, I struck out again on my proposed title for the third book in the series. Since it is set in Cataract Canyon on the Colorado River in Utah, a well-known, challenging whitewater run, I suggested the title of Cataract Canyon. (I have trouble with alliteration, don't I?)

Of course, Midnight Ink voted that choice down. It didn't match the precedent set by the previous two titles of the first word being associated with death and murder and the second word being a whitewater rafting term. They came up with the title of Fatal Descent instead. I'm still getting used to that new title, but it's really growing on me. I can see the reasons for the change. The book is about a descent down the river and it also includes some climbing action as well as a murder, so the title has multiple layers of meaning. Very cool!

Titles are sooo important, because they give readers a quick glimpse into what the book is going to be about. The title is your first--and often only--chance to hook a reader into purchasing the book. It has to really rock! Not really suck--like many of my title choices do. I've almost gotten to the point of throwing up my hands and turning in book manuscripts untitled. I'm ready to let others who have a better eye for sales and marketing pin a label on my books. I'll focus on the characters and the story instead.

Do you have a book title story to share? I hope you will, in the comments!

A Little Help from My Friends

Keith here.

We authors try to believe it's the quality of our prose, the unforgettable nature of our characters, the verve of our plotting, and the freshness of our voice that really count in winning over readers. Maybe. But to win them over in the first place, we have to get them to pick up -- or look online at -- what we've written. That makes the title and the cover of our books critical to their success.

It's a little early to worry about the cover of my work-in-progress. As Jessie noted in her post yesterday, some writers need a title to start writing. Not me. But since I have a draft done, I think it is time to start working on a title.

I came up with the title of my last book in online discussions with blog-friends (here and here) and I'm hoping for a little help from my friends this time, too.



How much do you have to know about the book to come up with the right title? Not much, I think, because the whole point is to attract readers even before they know anything about the book. Okay then. I'm looking for something compelling. So far I've been calling it Two Octobers which doesn't exactly cry out, "Read me." Here are some alternatives I've been mulling over.

1. Brinksmanship
2. Two Times on the Brink
3. War and Love, Won and Lost
4. Twice at the Edge
5. Two Octobers on the Edge of War
6. Two Octobers on the Brink

Now that you've seen some potential titles, should I tell you a little more about the book? Maybe one of you will have an inspiration that trumps any of mine. The book opens at Stanford U in 1940 and then skips ahead to Washington, DC in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. JFK, of course, plays a role. The idea, of course, is to prevent the world from being blown up.

Please leave a comment, opinion, suggestion, or preference.

I get by with a little help from my friends,
Mmm, get high with a little help from my friends,
Mmm, gonna to try with a little help from my friends

THANK YOU!

Title 5

Cricket McRae

Lye in Wait
Heaven Preserve Us
Spin a Wicked Web
Something Borrowed, Something Bleu
???

Okay, so the titles of my Home Crafting Mysteries are admittedly punny, maybe even a little corny. Hopefully memorable, as well. Each one does manage to touch on the home craft which serves as a backdrop for that particular story of murder and mayhem. I've never had any trouble coming up with titles. Easy peasy.

So it was with a certain amount of dismay that I realized I didn't know what to call the fifth in the series. All the other books were a title in my head first, and much of the story fell out of those few words. They had power. They were the hook on which I hung my tale when I left for the night.

Now I'm working on a another mystery, and it doesn't have a name. Oh sure, there's a working title. I don't hate it, but it doesn't resonate. It also doesn't reveal enough about the home craft behind the mystery. It's ... well, it's pretty bland.

I've thought about having a contest, but hesitate. What if I don't like any of the entries enough to choose one? Is that merely negative thinking? Why is this so important to me? Am I just being a control freak? Because, believe me, that's certainly possible. Oh, yes.

The longer I go without THE TITLE, the better I want it to be. This one needs to be clever, memorable. Punny, but in a good way. (Is there a good way?) If it's going to be this tough to come up with, it should be downright awesome.

Please understand: I'm not under the the illusion that my existing titles are genius. That's not the point. The point is the role they played in my head while I was writing. This one is different. I don't know -- maybe that's a good thing. Maybe I won't find the right title until the book is done. That's what a lot of (most) writers do, isn't it?

How important are titles to you? Do you have one when you start a piece, or does the title come out of the story after you've written it?

Was your working title etched in stone?

By Joe Moore

Book titles are critical. It’s that first impression when a potential reader glances down at the new fiction table in the local bookstore. And even if you’ve got a great title, you hope the publisher’s art department doesn’t somehow screw it up with the cover art. I’ve seen books with good titles that were almost impossible to read from a distance. And others where the design was so busy, it gave me a headache.

When Lynn Sholes and I decided to collaborate on our first book, we used CORPUS CHRISTI for the working title during the three years it took to write. Since it was a thriller about cloning Christ, we thought using the Latin for Body of Christ was cleaver. But when we sent it off to our agent, she pointed out the error of our ways. Could be a travel guide to a city in Texas. Could be a novelization of a Broadway play running at the same time. So we changed it to THE ENOCHIAN PROPHECY, a brilliant title that no one could pronounce or spell. Our publisher wisely changed it to THE GRAIL CONSPIRACY which has stuck in all the foreign translations except German.

Book 2 had the working title of THE THIRD SECRET. Steve Berry released a thriller by the same name so our agent changed the title to THE LAST SECRET. So far, it has worked for the foreign publishers that have translated it, although we haven’t seen the German version yet.

Book 3 had a working title of INDIGO RUBY for the year it took to write. The title had a great deal of meaning for at least two people: Lynn and myself. Again, the publisher stepped in and wisely renamed it THE HADES PROJECT which is exactly what the book is about. Clever.

BLACK NEEDLES was what we called number 4 which was the name we gave the deadly retrovirus that formed the threat of the book. Cool title, but it really didn’t tell the reader anything about the story. Could be a book about a knitting club for witches. So the publisher finally settled on THE 731 LEGACY. The book involves the Japanese WWII biological warfare division called Unit 731 and how its legacy propels the story. OK, we agree that was a wise decision and makes sense.

The working title to our next one is THE PHOENIX APOSTLES. We'll see if that makes it to print.

Sometimes it’s better to leave the titles to the marketing and sales department and just stick to writing the story.

So why are titles important? Paul McCartney’s working title of the Beatles classic “Yesterday” was “Scrambled Eggs.”

Have all your working titles made it to the cover of your book? If not, were you happy with the final version?