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CRAIGISM:
Poverty is a state of mind,
not of the pocketbook.
From The Autobiography of a Lesser Man,
the life, times, wit and wisdom of John Odra Craig
© Copyright 2009,
EJ Thornton
This book is presented in a free format here by the author and publisher. All rights reserved .
Name Your Books
VERY Deliberately
The title (or subtitle) of your book
should be its own category
The value of a good utility title - especially in a non-fiction book really will help it sell. Many people work to make titles clever or unique, when in essence a good utility title can make them sell more effectively.
When I teach my classes on "How to Publish Your Book," I spend quite a bit of time on the concept of the title and the subtitle. Many people want to create an amazing memorable title - one that brands itself and makes itself a household name but that is not an easy thing to do and not the place to start.
You have two pieces of information you can use to get your book into the places it needs to go and those are the title and the subtitle.
People who teach publicity teach that formula headlines work and work well - same for books...
Once I had a book buyer review my titles and if she didn't know what the book was within one second, she wasn't interested. She needed to understand what was inside the book at first glance. She needed to because that is what book customers also need. Obscure titles that you had to explain were useless to her because even if you could explain why you titled your book the way you did, you wouldn't be next to everyone in her stores as they pulled it off the shelves giving them the same speech. She accepted or rejected the books initially purely based on the title. As she is the one who makes the buying decisions for one of the largest retail bookstores on the planet, it is an opinion well worth listening to.
I have to agree that the books that sell the fastest with the least amount of effort are the books with the utility titles - Sex in the Golden Years, When Your Spouse Dies, Secrets to Creating Passive Income. Books like Clearwater Falls or The Granny Mystique are slower to move. Why? It takes time to get to understand what they're about. That's okay, they're worth getting to know, but taking the time to get to understand their contents isn't something that most book buyers will do when there is another book right next to them that tells them what they need to know, just by reading the spine.
Can your book's title be the same as one of the categories it will list under? If so, you have a huge head start on marketing it.
If you're self publishing, you don't have access to a marketing department, so pay attention to the reverse search engines, they will direct you well if you use them.
Case Study
The Promise
of Whale Song
A fiction book called Promise of Whale Songs was submitted by one of my authors. He likened the drug addict to the whale that had beached itself. Both the whale and the drug addict knew they were killing themselves with their behavior, but they did it anyway.
Sales were fine, when the author could speak of this analogy directly to an audience But sales were slow otherwise, and feedback from customers was that they thought the book was about whale communication even though the picture on the cover was a beached whale.
After listening to customer feedback, the author added the subtitle "Voyage of an Addict." His book was received by its intended audience much more readily. Most people with drug habits weren't looking for hope in a book about wildlife. Most whale lovers didn't like to see a beached whale on the cover of a book. Until he added the subtitle, which actually identified his biggest niche market, it was repelling all potential customers.
Once he connected to his customers, he sold lots more books.
Last updated on: Monday, February 20, 2012
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