The first thing that attracts people to your book is the title. Here are a few guidelines for coming up with a title that will grab readers of fiction (these also work for screenplays):
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Make it appropriate for the genre. Sure, it can be fun to give your book an ironic title, but the only people who will know that it's ironic are the people who have already read the book.
- Avoid generic titles. For instance, if your crime or thriller novel has the word "killing" in it, combine it with a more unusual word or phrase. This piques the potential reader's curiosity.
- Look for it inside the novel. Often you'll find a line of dialogue or a phrase that fits perfectly
- Get inspiration from the automatic book title generator at the Reedsy site. Here are a few examples it came up with for different genres:
- Crime: Outrun the Shadow
- Fantasy: Warrior's Legacy
- Mystery: Case of the Winged Monkey
- Romance: Midnight Bride
- Sci-fi: Apex Colony
- General: The Ruins of Time
- Check to make sure the title isn't already taken. There's no copyright on titles, but if you give your book the same name as one that already exists, the author could sue you for trying to get people to buy your book thinking it was theirs. If the other book is out of print or not popular this is less of an issue.
Side story: I wrote a marketing book called "Do Something Different" and got an outraged letter from someone who'd written a (very bad, very obscure) novel with that title. They wrote me nasty emails and gave my book a terrible Amazon review (which I had removed). I tried to explain that my book was non-fiction and therefore wasn't likely to be mistaken for theirs, but logic wasn't their strong point. - Try the title out on friends who are fans of your genre. Put it in a list with the titles of other books in that genre and ask your friends which of the titles they find intriguing (don't tell them which one is yours). To get more input, ask a blogger who covers your genre whether they'd be willing to ask their readers to do the same. You can also do this if you have a couple of titles you really like and don't know which one to choose.
