A Title is a Title is a Title

Finding just the right title…

Next to the right cover, finding just the right title for a book is the hardest thing an author had to do.

Ideally you want a title that will first spark a reader’s interest to pick up a book and yet you don’t want it to mislead. There is nothing worse than picking up a book and finding the title bears no resemblance to the contents.

Imagine picking up a book with a glossy cover of a fabulous looking cake and an alluring title and you immediately think….I want to make that cake… and you flip it open and discover the book is about an obscure Tibetan Monastery.

While this a little extreme it illustrates the need for authors to choose titles with care.

How do I choose a title…. sometimes a title will just come to me at other times finding the right title can be a real chore.

When this happens I’ve found it helpful to make a list of twenty words or phrases that I think best describe my book and juggle these around until I have several workable options.

It never ceases to suprise me how well this works. And how often I can come up with something that really works.

After I’d made a list I narrowed it down to three possible titles

To Protect Or To Love
Mine To Protect
The Farmer Takes A Wife

I put these through the Lulu title scorer https://lulu.com/titlescorer/index.php which is a great little tool.

My Editor really likes option three.

The Farmer Takes A Wife

As the story is a a marriage of convenience that turns out to be very inconvenient and a tad more dangerous than Heath Mullein ever thought when he accepted Sarah’s proposal….

So it fits… or does it? Still trying to decide.

 

 

Tags: featured, relevance of titles, titles

Published on Thursday, February 7th, 2013, under Latest News