The title of your book is more important than any other words in your book. Why? Because those words are what people see first. If those words don’t entice browsers to pick up your book, it hasn’t accomplished its goal.

1. What is your book about? Is it helpful to others? Does it meet a need in the community? Is it funny, serious, thoughtful, inspiring, etc.? Use the answers to these questions to help you decide on the most pertinent words that describe your book.

2. Keep it simple!  Complicated titles don’t grab the reader. You only have a couple of seconds to capture the attention of readers. If they have to reread a title or ponder over the meaning of it, they’ll move on.

3. Be direct, but don’t be mundane. Tell it like it is. That the best advice. Catchy titles are fun after someone explains what it means, but remember for most sales, you won’t be there to fill the customer in on the inside joke of it.

4. Subtitles help. My first self-help book was Ready Set Tweet.  I failed on the title. It didn’t tell others what the book is about. The subtitle helped. I added the subtitle A Speedy Guide to Twitter to it. It probably would have been better to use the subtitle as the title. If you can’t talk yourself out of that catchy, obscure title at least have a good subtitle.

5. Test your title out on others. Tell them the title and see if they can guess the topic of your book. If they can’t, keep working on it.

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