What to Title Your Business Book (1/7)
The 5 Cs of Great Business Book Titles
"Choose a title for your book at least as carefully as you would select a given name for your firstborn child."
- Nat Bodian, How to Choose a Winning Title
Nat got it right.
With both of our children, my wife and I discussed names for hours on
end. There are entire websites and even books devoted to the task of picking out a baby name. If you've ever attempted to go through with this with your own significant other, you know how emotional, exciting, and stressful it can be.
Names are important. To a degree, they define us. Whether because of some inherent quality or because of how people treat certain names, our own can shape who we become. We expect a "John" to be dependable. A "Catherine" might be demure. A boy named Sue has to be a tough son-of-a-gun.
Sure a baby's name is important—but a book's name? Does it really make or break the book? Isn't it really just a roll of the dice? And doesn't the author's reputation and marketing strategy matter more anyway? I mean, when you go to the bookstore, the titles of successful business books run the gamut, from the utilitarian (How to Win Friends and Influence People) to the intriguing (Who Moved My Cheese?) to the obscure (Purple Cow).
I can't teach you how to write a title that will guarantee success. What I can tell you is how I have applied my expertise from working with a couple dozen manuscripts, my experience from having read a few hundred business books, my naturally critical eye, and some serious thought to develop some insights into what you should aim for.
Why Take the Time to Write a Killer Title
"There are book titles that deserve better books, and there are books that deserve better titles."
- Dan Poynter, Writing Nonfiction
Is a title important?
Absolutely.
In fact, it's critical. It's the first impression people have of your book. If they never get any further than the title, then it doesn't matter how great of a book you wrote—they'll never stick around long enough to find out. On the other hand, plenty of people make the decision to buy a book based solely on reading the title. The classic Think and Grow Rich is one such example; The One Minute Manager is another. Plenty of people have bought both just because of the promise or solution implied.
So, yes: an effective title can propel your book to success or doom it to relative failure. Other books succeed in spite of their titles. Let's establish one profound truth about business book titles: a successful book is not the same thing as a successful title. As Dan Poynter's quote notes, great books and great titles don't always go hand in hand.
Then again, some books' success has nothing to do with how effective or ineffective their title is. Seth Godin can name his next book whatever he wants to and it will sell on the strength of his reputation alone. Everything he's written thus far has held nuggets of wisdom and we expect his next will be no less. Malcolm Gladwell, too: Blink and Outliers sound more like sci-fi action thrillers than science-based insights on life. But with Gladwell's name on the cover, they will fly off the shelves. (These two authors write books that are perfect examples of what I continually preach: a great business book should be both insightful and interesting.) That is, it must deliver substantial value in a compelling way.
But unless you are an established author like Godin or Gladwell, you can't count on the strength of your name to carry your book. In fact, you need to write effective business titles even if you have a great marketing platform like these guys. That way, you can still appeal to people who have never heard of you.
Trump and Iacocca would be great examples of books that sold off the strength of their titles alone…if the titles did not tie right back into the idea of people buying the book because they recognize the name. Again, even if you're a famous celebrity, you should write a title that can attract a completely new audience.
We could use Financial Peace as an example. The title taps into one of the biggest sources of emotional (and marital) turmoil, plus implies a solution in the same breath. But you could argue that Dave Ramsey had a ready market for his book through his personal finance company.
With all these examples, the success of the authors' books may have been unrelated to their titles. To prove my point about the importance of a great title, we need an unknown person with no established market where the business book became a bestseller on the strength of its title alone.
Cue The 4-Hour Workweek.
Tim Ferris enjoyed record sales and earned a cult following because he shared life-changing insights in his book—but it all started with the spark of his killer title. (In fact, the story of how he finally settled on that title inside his book is an informative read in itself.) He took the time to nail down the words on the cover. That's what propelled his book's success and launched him onto the international stage.
Nat was right: pick out your book's name as carefully as you would your own kid's. (Although, and ironically, Nat's own title could have been better.)
What Your Title Is Supposed to Do
"Authors, as a rule, are poor judges of titles and often go for the cute or clever rather than the practical."
- Nat Bodian, How to Choose a Winning Title
Before we can begin to judge what a good business book title really is, we must first agree on what it's supposed to do.
An effective title can sell the book on its strength alone.
Before your reader will buy, you have to capture their attention. Before you can capture their attention, you have to capture their eye.
Have you ever used microfilm to search through old newspapers or library collections? The negative images of the papers zoom by in a blur. All you can do is get the gist of the big-lettered headlines. When one catches your eye, you stop and then click on the backlight that turns the negative image into a normal one so you can read the rest of the story.
That's what your title has to do. While your potential reader is zooming through their everyday life, your title has to catch their eye so that they stop and the light clicks on: "Oh! That looks interesting!"
Subconsciously, they began to ask, "I wonder if this book solves a problem I have. I wonder if it will meet my expectations. I wonder if it's what I've been looking for."
From looking at your title, your prospective reader will usually look at your subtitle, then whatever other copy is on the front (blurb, "Foreword by," etc.), and then turn it over to read the back and/or dust jacket copy. If they are online, they follow a similar process: they start by looking at your cover and title, then read the subtitle, and then read the rest of the content on the page.
The task of selling your book is a more intricate matter than it generally appears, although the actual decision of buying your book may happen in just a matter of seconds. In any event, it starts with your title.3 3 Actually, your reader's first impression is a combination of your cover and title, which is why "Thou Shalt Not Skimp On Thy Cover" is number one on my list of "The 7 Deadly Sins of Business Books."
But a great title can sell your book all by itself.
So how do you successfully capture your intended audience's attention?
Do you signal specifically who the book's for, such as HR Managers: Read This Book? Do you use an unusual title to arouse their curiosity, à la Meatball Sundae? Do you go with something as straightforward as How to Get a Job As a Coder? All these approaches have apparently worked over the years for their respective authors. So which one works best?
There's no one single factor; there are actually five. They form a ladder of importance. You have to address one rung before you can proceed to the next—something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I call it the 5 Cs. A great business book title is:
1. Clear
2. Compelling
3. Convenient
4. Clever
5. Continuous
If you have to choose between being clear and being clever, err on the side of clarity. If you have to choose between a title that provokes a response or one that is easy to remember, go for the action. Don't fall so in love with one particular title that you skip over more important considerations. Too many authors discover too late that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."
Get it right.
