Worderella Writes

Overdone and Cliche Titles

Titles, unfortunately, are usually not within the realm of control an author has (if traditionally published). The title is considered a part of the marketing of the book, same as the cover and back copy. The thing is, titles, same as covers, are at the whim of the current trend…and trends get old. That’s why they are a trend to begin with.

BookEnds, LLC the other day made a post about titles that are overdone and should never grace bookshelves again. Their list included…

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Test Your Title

Found something fun and nifty online, I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this but I thought I’d share it anyway: you can test your work-in-progress title for popularity. Now that I’m writing this, I think I found it in Writer’s Digest, which I’m reading in between classes and while I wait for programs to compile. Lulu.com has been working with statisticians, apparently, to come up with this nifty little Title Scorer, and the results are pretty accurate to a certain degree…you as an author, reader and writer will have to use your own judgement, of course, to decide whether you should believe it. The highest score you can get is an 83, I’m not sure why, but such is life. My first novel, Catching the Rose, made it up to the 70s somewhere. The Winslow Charade got a paltry 20-something score.

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Creating a Title They Won’t Throw Back

Yes, I accept e-mails from AuthorHouse even though they were sued for libel because they accepted a self-published author’s book which had been rejected by another self-publishing company for libel. I accept e-mails from AuthorHouse even though their contract is less than stellar. I accept e-mails from AuthorHouse because they send helpful information like the following.

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