What's In A Name? Crafting Book Titles That Sell

The title of a book can become a selling tool to help sell a book. It does this by effectively conveying what the book is about or at least give an inkling of what lies between the pages (I have seen vague titles that intrigue me enough to search inside or download a few chapters. Mind you, I don’t do this all the time!). Get it wrong and authors and publishers alike leave prospective buyers scratching their heads as to what the book is about.

More often than not, people may not bother to read the back cover blurb or the contents page. Plus, matters are further complicated in a bookshop where the spine (and not always the cover) is facing outward. This means that even a beautiful cover design may not help. These days, one only gets a few seconds to convince a book reader to part with their hard earned cash.

The Makings Of An Effective Book Cover

Books & Resources from GF Books

The fact is people DO judge a book by its cover. In my time, I have seen some great ones, creative ones, some out-of-the-box thinking ones, some I don’t get and some (quite frankly) shady or even in the abysmal category. The latter making me think, ‘what were you thinking?’ I have found all these categories both in the traditionally published books as well as self-published books.

Focusing on self-published books, after speaking to many aspiring/new authors and self-publishers, the reason for some of the sub-standard or ill-thought out covers has been due to their presumptions of the costs of book cover design.