How to craft a great title for your nonfiction book that will work for you
It’s time to look beneath the surface of book titles and find out what makes them fly, or flop. Does it matter what you call your book if the content is cracking? Are there any golden rules to apply when giving your nonfiction book a title? Let’s take a look.
We’ll be dipping into:
- Book title basics
- Popular title formats, by genre
- When to come up with a title
- How to test a title out
What’s in a title?
Let’s face it, we all judge a book by its cover and its title. There’s no denying it!
And if your title doesn’t nip readers by the ears and pull them in, then they’ll probably just skip onto the next one.
If you’re self-publishing, you can do what the heck you like with your title, as you have all the creative say-so. That said, you still want to make sure your book title is going to find its audience and give away enough about what’s in the book to make it helpful.
For those taking a traditional publishing path, there’s a good chance your publisher will change the title you submit to fit with the market trends, the suite of books it’s sitting alongside, or their house style.
But that’s no reason to throw any old title into your book proposal. If the publisher can see you’ve spent time creating a clever, well-constructed title for your manuscript, it reflects well on your skill as a writer and, more practically, gives a potential publisher a good insight into the book before they’ve read it.
There are no golden rules for coming up with the perfect title, but here are some starting points to help you to develop yours:
- Make it memorable and easy to share
- Capture your book’s essence
- Pique a reader’s curiosity
- Make a promise
- Keep it simple
- Make it sensational, shocking
- Make it easy to say aloud
- Reflect how your book will benefit your readers (e.g. inform, entertain, persuade, inspire)
- Include keywords to make it more searchable
Popular title formats, by genre
Now, nonfiction is a broad genre filled with all kinds of books with differing needs, markets, readerships, topics and expectations. That’s why we’re going to look at three of the main subgenres in turn to find out a little bit more about each of them and their title tricks.
Memoir
The fun thing about life writing titles is that they can be playful, creative, whimsical, whacky, dark, mysterious or outrageous, whatever!
The key to a memoir title is to touch on the theme (comedy, fame, sport etc) and/or keep it characterful. The more it reflects the personality and life of the person between the pages, the better.
Popular formats include:
- single words – e.g. Becoming by Michelle Obama, Spare by Prince Harry
- well-known phrases or catch phrases (sometimes with a twist) – e.g. This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay, Just Ignore Him by Alan Davies, In the Time of Nick by Nick Owen
- fun with puns – e.g. Trowel and Error by Alan Titchmarsh
- shockers – e.g. I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
- clever, playful, subversive ones – e.g. Me: Moir by Vic Reeves (real name Jim Moir), sTori Telling by Tori Spelling, A Young Man’s Passage by Julian Clary, Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
- aspirational, positive vibes – e.g.Yes Please by Amy Poehler
- lyrical, creative ones – e.g. The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls, Married to the Man Who Washed Himself Away by Joan Leech
- playing on well-known other titles – e.g. Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler, Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand.
Which one suits you and your life story? Give some a go, then simply add the subtitle “A Memoir”, so that everyone knows what’s what!
How-to/personal development
How-to and personal development titles tend to be clear and to the point. So they mostly do what they say on the tin. This is because readers come to the shelf with a problem they want solving or a knowledge gap to fill. They need to know, from the title, that your book fulfills that need.
One way to ensure your reader gets what they need from a clear title is by following the tried and tested 3P method for title composition: address the person, outline their pain point, and issue your promise.
For example, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. You could say the person is the quiet one, the introvert. The pain point is the world that can’t stop talking. The promise is all in the word ‘power’ and the implied strength and new perspective you’ll discover from reading the book.
Another popular formula for this genre is to start with powerful, promising phrases like Secrets of…, Stop doing…, Be the…, The Power of… . Or to use a creative main title and follow up with an explanatory subtitle, like this one: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown.
There is a trend away from including a number in your title (e.g. 5 Ways to Show Up for Yourself) even if your advice or model involves a countable step process. This is because it makes them less searchable. Potential readers aren’t likely to search ‘5 Ways to’ when looking for a book to help them solve a problem or answer a question.
Special interest
For hobby books, history books and other special interests, the same ‘rules’ apply as with how-to and personal development titles. There’s plenty of scope to be creative, provided your title also explicitly states what special interest is covered.
Often this means the subtitle doing the heavy lifting, as you can see from these examples: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, Driving the Green Book: A Road Trip Through the Living History of Black Resistance by Alvin Hall.
Take your time and test it out
There’s no rush to have a title. It could be the last thing you write, once your manuscript is polished off. Some writers need to have completed the whole book before coming up with a title because the finished text feeds and shapes their thought process, ensuring the title mirrors the actual content, not what they thought they were going to write.
Other writers might have written a whole book inspired by a knock-out title they came up with and built the content around.
There’s no right or wrong time to write it. But it has to feel right and do its job.
If you’re unsure how your title might go down, you could always test it out. Platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and PickFu allow you to create a poll to test title ideas with potential readers and garner useful feedback before you commit.
And don’t forget, you can change your book title even after it’s published, provided you have the rights from your publisher or have self-published. It’s especially easy to change for ebooks – you just upload a new title and cover (but remember to change any mention of the title elsewhere in the book as well, e.g. those running heads at the top of each page!).