Titles. Blog posts need them. Books need them. Movies need them. Short stories need them. Poems need them. And I suck at them. The only one of those I don’t write is poems. So I have to come up with titles for a lot of different projects. Frankly I’m glad that once I publish my editor will most likely change my title. I don’t get married to my titles because I know they’ll most likely change. If they don’t just come to me in a flash of inspiration I have a hard time coming up with a title. The inspired ones though, I’ll fight to keep. As an example, here are the titles of my complete, still unpublished books.

Highland Deception
Double Deception
Lorelle’s Song (ugh, that one’s really horrible)
Silk Secrets

Highland Deception takes place in the Highlands of course and the hero thinks the heroine has deceived him. In Double Deception my heroine is a twin. For Lorelle’s Song I had no clue what to call it. The heroine’s name is Lorelle and the hero writes her a song to show how much he loves her. The heroine in Silk Secrets owns a lingerie store called Silk Secrets.

Titles are important. In an article in the Huffington Post about what motivates readers to buy books titles are on the list. A good, catchy title means a lot. For me that’s the first thing that usually attracts me. If the title sounds intriguing I’ll pick up the book and read the back cover copy. Then I read the first page. If everything sounds good I’ll buy it.

I was looking at the Chapters list of NYT bestsellers and I gotta say, based on the titles alone I wouldn’t have picked up a lot of those books to even get to the back cover copy. For example: Charlie St. Cloud: A Novel. It’s just not speaking to me. The Passage. Also didn’t speak to me but it was a recommended read by Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly article so I read the blurb. It sounds like an awesome book. I will be buying it. Maybe even before it comes out in paperback. Swimsuit. I love James Patterson but that title doesn’t grab me either. Not like his older ones – Kiss the Girls, Cat & Mouse, Cradle and All.

Of course if you’re a well known author readers will buy every book you write. I would buy Dean Koontz’s grocery lists if he ever decided to put them into book form. Other authors have to grab me first. And they do that with the title. Publishers know this. That’s why they usually end up changing the title the author originally thought up. Sometimes titles just don’t grab me though so I’ll have to buy those books based on recommendations from other people.

I’m off to work. Maybe on my way I’ll come up with a title for the first book in my urban fantasy series. I love the idea, love the character. Can’t come up with a title for it to save my life.

Until next time…

Cindy