How To Choose A Title For Your Novel

Choosing the title of your book is an important decision artistically and commercially. You want to grab a potential reader's attention whilst having the title being in the top searches of the Amazon searches and on search engines like Google and Bing. Here are a few hints and tips I've learnt as an author.


Look on any bookshelf at home, in a library or in a bookstore like Waterstones and you will see that most books have two to three words in their titles. Try and stick to this limit, unless your book has a distinguished or necessary name. For example my second novel, The Drummer Boy, obeys this rule, whilst the well-known ghost of Aldershot, The Grey Lady, needed, I felt, to have the name of the hospital, to identify her from other Grey Lady ghosts around the world. Hence why I broke my own rule with The Grey Lady Ghost of The Cambridge Military Hospital an extravagant nine words.

Try not to give away any twists or surprises in your novel or short story. Your reader won't thank you! But do try and get the subject matter within the title to give them a first impression of the content matter. This also helps when they are searching for a book in online stores like Amazon or perhaps even through a search engine such as Bing or Amazon. You want your title to be on the first page of results, or better still, right at the top.

You'll also want to grab the attention of a potential agent or publisher. Or impress your existing ones if you are talented and lucky enough to be represented. Authors dread the slush pile as much as rejection slips and this is your chance to make a first impression.

Personally, I always struggle with writing my short stories and novels until I've chosen the title. I'm currently writing my third novel and struggled for weeks to get my fingers to type away, but since finding inspiration for the title my digits just flow across the keyboard like a frenzied typist.

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