We all know the saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, which is great advice; however, it doesn’t actually apply to books. This means that if you actually want to sell your book (and what author doesn’t), you should actually know how to attract readers with our cover.
Unfortunately, readers and even authors judge a book by its cover, including the title. Now, the question is how to come up with a perfect title that makes people want to read your book. There are countless different ways to choose a great book title for your book, and the process differs from fiction to non-fiction.
Suppose the genre of your book is fiction or fantasy, in which case you will have to focus as much on the cover design, colors, characters, theme, and the overall look and feel of it as the book title. To save time and effort, you might as well focus on the title and leave the cover design to the fantasy book cover designers for hire.
On the contrary, if you have written a non-fiction book, then you will have to intensely focus on getting the perfect book title as it has to really pop and speak to your potential readers while addressing their pain points specifically in order to make them at least check out the book to learn more.
Believe us – if you nail this process, you will be in for a treat of book sales. So, the question is how you find the perfect book title to boost sales. Read on to learn more about the best tips to attract the right readers because attracting the right readers who will benefit the most from your books is what is really going to make your book grow and skyrocket in sales and reviews.
Here are the tips:
Make a List of All Ideas
You might want to start by listing all your potential book ideas. And yes, we mean everything that you can potentially think of. Get a notebook or open a document – whatever process you use to jot down ideas.
Write down every potential book title idea that you think could fit. At this point, nothing is too crazy, simple, or over the board. At this stage, you want to get your mind moving in the right direction, thinking about what potential ideas your book title could cover.
You might as well think about what you want the title to cover and how you can best translate that into a simple, clever, but very telling title.
There are a couple of things to think about while crafting the perfect title for your book, including that you should make the title as clear and concise as possible. Also, make sure that the people who see the title know what your book will be about without having to read the subtitles or read inside the description.
It is easy to get caught up in coming up with really clever and interesting names. And while the names might be really interesting, they won’t benefit your book in the way that a really clear and concise title will.
We recommend coming up with a minimum of twenty book title ideas.
Focus on Memorability & Alliteration
While you are brainstorming your ideas for the book title, you might as well think about memorability and alliteration. These are two different elements that are crucial for helping people remember your book title.
When people see your book along with the book title on social media or any other platform, they should be able to remember it. Remember that your book title is something they will be thinking back to when they were searching for books online – is your title that they will be able to recall pretty easily?
The best way to do that is by using alliteration. Just a quick reminder – alliteration is the use of the same letters or sounding letters within the title. By using alliteration, you will make it very easy for people to remember your book title.
You might think of a couple of fiction books that we still remember because of the use of alliteration, such as Peter Pan or Gone Girl. These types of titles are really easy to remember –not only because they are concise but also because of the use of alliteration.
Narrow Down the List
The next step is to take your list and start narrowing it down to the top three book titles that you really like. Ideally, the top three titles should be clear, concise, and perhaps even clever. Also, choose titles that have a little alliteration in there.
One of the main things you have to focus on in this area is not simply picking the title that speaks to you but also looking at the title from the reader’s perspective. It is easy to think of a title that you like and find interesting.
However, instead of getting carried away, you might want to place yourself in the reader’s shoes and ask yourself whether this is something that you would read if you were somebody else who is looking to benefit from what your book is about.
That said, pick those top three titles and get feedback before declaring one title the winner.
Get Feedback
Understandably, at this point, it can get very scary putting your book title out in the world and asking people which one they would like. Now, you don’t necessarily have to do this on a broad spectrum by any means.
You might keep it limited to your friends or family. Or, if you have a mentor and you have joined a community of writers, you might want to ask them for their valuable feedback. This way, you can get a valuable outside opinion that will be better than your own opinion.
The underlying reason is that you cannot get outside yourself to choose what is the best – you need an unbiased opinion, and this is exactly where outside sources come into play.
You can also ask people for votes on different social media platforms, and the book title that gets the most votes or people are intrigued about will be the best one – because these are the people who would pick your book based on that title.