How to Title Your Book: Tips for Brainstorming & Choosing a Strong Book Title + Title Reveals!

Here are my top tips for coming up with a strong title for your next novel that will help you sell more books and reach more readers! PLUS I'm sharing a title (and series title) reveal for my upcoming books!

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Where you can receive digital early reader copies of my books, writing & publishing advice, help with your author platform, meet writer friends, and more!

💻 M Y A U T H O R N E W S L E T T E R :

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Thanks for watching!
❤️ Bethany

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#Authortube #NovelWriting #SelfPublishing

[mariavalente]

I get a sentence I like and use it, which seems odd, but for someone who writes short stories, and needs a lot of titles, it's either the charcater's name, or a sentence I like. Usually works.

[torichambers]

Best book title ever: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.

[Falconlibrary]

For awhile there, all mystery/thriller books had to have "girl" in the title ("Gone Girl" seems to have started this, although we may never pinpoint its exact origins).
Speaking of books with female main characters: "Tomorrow Is Another Day" was the working title of "Gone With the Wind", and up until the very last second, Scarlett was named "Pansy".
Having an editor is important in the publishing process for titles, too. Many famous books had original titles that were just awful, but an editor was able to suggest something better. Would you prefer "Trimalchio in West Egg" or "The Great Gatsby"? Because F. Scott Fitzgerald preferred the former, but his editor, Maxwell Perkins, said "hell naw, dawg." Pretty sure that's how it went.

[jenag]

Titles mean more to me than book covers. I grew up before the Amazon era and it was the titles on the spines of the books at the library that inspired me to stop and explore. Some of my favorite titles are: A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Seven and a Half Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, and Flow My Tears The Policeman Said. How tantalizing! Let it be said: your titles are ALWAYS on point!!!

[jaquelinegrenier]

Duuude, using this method, I managed to find the title for my Mystery/Sci-Fi/Teen Drama Mashup. Title for the Franshise as a whole, one Book title plus the generation the first book is Talking about! Thank you so much!!!! I'm going to use this method for all my books and Franchises!!!!

[RoseDPatruno]

Thank you for the video and the tips! I never thought about the importance of marketability (at the same time, I haven’t debuted yet) and I’ve always chosen my titles on personal likes/dislikes and sudden “ah-a!” moments.
Hence the question: what about titles that sound like obscure words to the Common Reader? Or are in a different language but has no precise translation/the translation doesn’t sound good?

[SegalsCareer]

oh... i just borrow ("borrow") song titles that seem like they probably would fit, and hope for the best. Less for my brain, yea! And it works so far lol #laziness

[kalex]

Okay I have a silly question
Aside from your books on the bookshelf have you read ALL of those books?! Lol

[Awesome_Force]

It looks like some of the fantasy books are just trying to have a title similar to George R. R. Martin's books.

[rosannebowman]

I can't say how important it is to google your title first. I was going to title my last book in my Peter Pan trilgoy Tinkerbell's Revenge, but when I googled it, it's a fairly common strain of marijuana. Since I write middle-grade, that is a big no-no (although, I did find it kind of funny). Always, always, always google the name!!!

[michaeljasper]

I really like the series title. If she is the queen of something specific or a certain kind of queen, it might be cool to have an adjective before queen. But obviously, you know what you are doing. Love your videos.

[LeeRalph]

Great advice. I have my title. my problem is the subtitle. The part about similiar names is really wrecking me on my nonfiction. Many books on the same subject all seem to carry a very similiar subtitle! But the bad thing is that the subtitle perfectly explains the subject.

[makennazornes]

Yay, I’m excited to hear your titles! I think they’re great. 😄 I enjoy seeing all the different books you have on your shelves too, ha. I never see anyone post about The False Princess, but I loved that one.

[ericarowanarts]

Super helpful! Titling books is one of my weaknesses. I love the series title and the titles for the next 2 books! I love how The Secret Curse feels almost like a reference to The Cursed Hunter, especially since we'll start getting more of how Nezrin's people came to be cursed. Very clever!

[theverseshed]

When I searched your channel, I entered "Choosing best keywords" and found this upload.
Your topic covers titles/subtitles very clearly - but what about brainstorming and choosing the best choices for the '7 search keywords, ' and how to decide their ranking from 1 to 7?
It would be interesting to hear your thoughts about that aspect of self-publishing.

[jazzmineanderson]

What's your next project after finishing the series?

[gamexpress]

Would having a book tittle that starts with 'Fire" work? Would it be eye catching? And congratulations on your book title!!!

[poohbear]

Is it OK if I use the title The Queen's Rising for the title of my autobiography?

[abbyodelson]

I unfortunately didn't know much about publishing or marketing when I published the first book in my series, and the book name is incredibly common when I look on amazon now. When I tell people what it is, I just tell them to look up my author name because if they look up the title, they won't find it.

[Musikchic]

The whole title not taken is so hard with fantasy because there are so many common words and phrases that are used >.<