For Non-Fiction Authors: Book Title Checklist

If you're thinking of writing a book, you probably already have a title in mind and maybe it's even good. But is it brilliant? The title is what's going to sell your book. So let's run it through our five point checklist to make sure your title is brilliant. Hey there, I'm Julie Broad with Book Launchers dot com. A title, a fantastic title, is essential to sell your book. It has to capture attention, get people curious and be easy for them to remember and tell others about. So does your title check off all the boxes. Let's make sure. If you haven't spent dozens of hours brainstorming your title, you might need to spend a little bit more time. So what are the five things your title needs to have? So it is brilliant. Number one, is it short? Now there are exceptions to this rule, of course. I am sure just as soon as I say short and three words or less is ideal, you're going to think of, well, what about how to win friends and influence people and book titles like that that are really long but very famous? Yes, there's always exceptions, but the majority of best selling books in the non fiction categories and even fiction tend to be three words or less. Just check out the top 20 best selling business books. Right now we're talking about books like outliers. Start with why Option B, Boomerang. These books are all selling extremely well and they're super short. The other thing with short titles is it's easy to remember, which is point number two on the checklist. Now here's how you test if your book title is easy to remember. Tell your friends what you're thinking of calling your book and then a few hours later say, hey listen, do you remember what I told you that I was going to call my book and see if they remember? Now don't tell them that this is a test because then they'll make sure to remember. What you want to find out is, is your book title memorable because you want people to be able to tell others and of course remember which book they want to look up when they go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble to buy your book. Number three, is it easy to say? Now you might be thinking, why does that matter? They're reading. Well, let me tell you, if you're doing a great job of selling your book, you're going to be talking about it all the time. And if it's a tongue twister, it's going to get messed up. And here's a little confession secret. The new brand you'd which is my second book. For some reason, people get it wrong all the time. So if I'd had people say it over and over and over again to test if it's easy to say, say, I would have discovered that there's something about this title that people just can't seem to get it right. So what do you do with your title again? Get your friends to say it over and over again. Talk about it all the time. Imagine yourself on a podcast or a media interview trying to drop that title in three, four, five times in a few minutes. So say it over and over and over again. Do you still like it? And is it still easy to say Great. Check off this box. Number 4. Is the URL for your book title available to me? It's not a deal breaker if you can't get it, but it is really ideal to have it. Because think about it. If somebody types the name of your book into Google and they find four other websites and not yours, then they're going to start to wonder if you really are the leader in this category that you say you are. Also, when it comes to branding, because you might be thinking of having brand extensions off of this book title. You know, think about Rich Dad, Poor Dad. They have games and courses and conferences all following that. Rich dad, Poor dad, branding. If you don't own the URL, that kind of stuff is off the table for you. So to me, to give this a big check, you want to make sure that you can buy the URL for your book. If you really love your book title though, and you absolutely are insisting on keeping it, even if you can't get the URL, then hopefully you can at least get your title book dot com. That'll fill in a bit of a gap. Number five, does your title pop? There's a great book on this called Pop by Sam Horn and basically he's talking about how to break out, not blend in. The big thing is you want to make sure that your book title stands out and doesn't sound like every other book in its category. So to do that, read the book. It'll give you lots of great tips. But again, think about brand extensions. Think about what will create curiosity, what will have people grabbing that book saying I got to know what, what's inside. So can you check off all five things? Even if you can, you probably want to run a few tests just to be sure that your title is going to have people run into the store and buying your book. So how can you test it? If you've got an email, newsletter you might want to, you know, split it in half and send out one title to half of the list and the other title to the other half. See which one people click on more. Ask people, would you want to buy this book or this book? And just see which titles are making people want to pull out their credit card and buy your book. All right, like this video. Please give it a thumbs up. If you prefer to pay for your video tips, please give this a thumbs down. And of course, subscribe to the channel so you catch all the tips. And we can hang out again in the next video. So you might already have a good title. Okay, just rewind that part. Outliers. Start with why, Plan B or option B. Something like that. Oops. Repeat, number four is the URL. You're in Southern Alabama now, baby. Okay? And I've forgotten what else. Darn it. Do not sound like other books in your category. Okay? Break out or blend in because you don't want to blend in. Why can't I get this one? Good, okay?