Chapter Five: Naming Names

You want to believe that everyone will find your book, fall in love, buy it, read it, and share it with their friends, but the cold hard reality is this: almost all of the people who ever come in contact with your book listing will never read past the title.

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READ CHAPTER ONE HERE

That's a lot of pressure to put on a single line of text, isn't it? But there you have it. If people like your title, they might read your description. If that goes well, they might read your sample, and finally order your book and read it.

So, much like a fisherman, the key is in the hook. You have seen this term before. You have probably heard it used to describe pop music, that catchy little phrase, “All about that bass” that makes you want to sing along, is called a hook.

In titling, your hook should bring up more questions than answers. Can you really teach them what you promise? Will your book really change their lives in that way?

They should want it. They should be afraid to leave without it. They should feel as if they cannot live without it. Your hook should promise to provide the carefully researched solution that you have worked so hard to build your concept around.

Different Hooks for Different Fish

The Promise: You can solve their problem, teach them what they have always wanted to know, or make them an expert on the topic they have been longing to find out more about! There are several ways to find out what this should be.

•Wing it, just cast it out there and see if your best idea works

•Study the bestselling books on Amazon, paying attention to their titles, and looking at the reviews, especially bad ones to see what people were disappointed in.

•Look at blog comments, or forums within your topic. Mimic comments and language used by the people in your target niche. Sound like one of them.

Not only is this good title hook research it should also inform the content of your book. If you promise them Ten Ways To Improve Their Looks and Get More Dates, you better not stop at nine.

Be Specific: The more specific your title is, the more likely you are to attract a strongly interested niche market. Tell them how much, how long or how many.

For instance, the title of this book: “How to Write Your First Ebook in Seven Days or Less”

Additional Hook Tools

Search Bar Titler: Using Amazon, start typing your title into the search bar and see what it supplies as an autocomplete suggestion. The same thing can be done on Google. Both of these are designed to provide suggestions based on highest search traffic.

Try this for instance: type in “How to dance..”

Google suggests, “How to Dance Hip Hop” or “ How to Dance Bachata”

Amazon suggests “How to Dance as the Roof Caves In” (probably not very helpful, but down a little further, it agrees that “How to Dance Hip Hop” might be a good idea.

These ideas might require a little polish, but they show you what people are interested in.

Google Keyword Tool

Since this tool is based specifically on things put into Google, it is a good way to get hooks. Use it as before, but focus on “related ideas” and “ more keywords”.

The key to remember here, is how people will find your book. Sure, you're going to build a massive personal blog following from your instagram and pinterest posting, but until you do, you're going to rely on keyword searches in Google and Amazon.

On Amazon, you'll also have a suggestion tool that supplies searchers with "also reads". Titling your book similarly to good selling volumes, may play in your favor.

Remember, it's a numbers game!

Use the same filtering techniques you used for choosing your book topic. You want a lot of searches to bring up your title, but you don't want a lot of competition for those searches.

Don't forget that targeting is important here too. If you're writing about cooking, making it sound like a car repair manual, might not be the best way to get relevant search results.

Once you've landed on a title, check it. Are there other books already named that, or with very similar titles? Are they similar to your book, or in a completely different category?

There is no law against naming a book the same as another book. In fact, I know authors that use name recognition to sell books all the time. It's up to you. Do you just want sales, or is originality a part of your brand? Lots of writers make a decent living on knock offs of other people's style.

Before you crucify me for saying that, don't forget, a wise man once said, there's nothing new under the sun, and that was over 4000 years ago. Whatever the story is, it's been told before.

The final test for me, is cover. When I see the title I want on the cover of my new book, I'm sold. But, sometimes, I see it and meh, it needs to change!

Next up, we'll dig into compiling your ideas and getting the structure down.

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