The Title Comes First: How to Name Your Book Before You Write It

Hey, welcome back, revenue writers, to the revenue writers podcast. I am your host, Chris Stanley, and I'm super glad to be back with you on my sailboat today as we continue our travels. But I want to continue this series on building your power promise. For most of you, that's going to be as you're writing your book, but it could be for whatever your next project is. But a power promise is built on number one, P, your problem that you're addressing and trying to solve. Always your offer of a solution, which is what we talked about last time. And now I want to talk about the words and expectations, which is the W and the e. And I'll try to get them both in in this episode. It might need to go to 2. We'll see how it goes. But when you're starting a book, the words expectations are by your title in your subtitle. Because what people read immediately on a book other than your cover is, okay, the title. What is this book about? And so solidifying your title before you ever write a word is so important because you're setting that expectation. You're using words to let people know, hey, this is what this book's going to be about. And if you don't do that before you start writing, you could write the word wrong. You could just write a whole different book. And then you slap a title on it and it's like it doesn't match the promise, right? The power promise you you doesn't match the expectation in the words that you used. So it's important to set that in the beginning because it makes your writing so much more laser focused. Let's talk about titles. How do you choose a good title? First off, there are three different types of titles I tend to to choose from. Number one is one word titles. I mean, if you can name a book ask like that is a very famous book ask or outliers. Those are amazing book titles. The link by Malcolm. Well, margin by Richard Swinson, like epic, right? That's great. If you have one word like that, be ready to deliver on that super promise because if it clearly articulates or at least opens up that curiosity loop, super important because that's the job of the title is to hook the reader to make them curious. The second type of title I like is framework titles. So this is what I rely a lot on in my mini book series. So mini book marketing, mini book model. These are frameworks. I also had, you know, other books that I've loved and read, like Atomic Habits. It's a framework that is the name of James Clear's core framework. Another one could be another title. The third one is brand titles. So maybe you're trying to establish a brand or a new product line. And so, you know, Donald Miller did Business Made Simple. What was his company, Business Made Simple. So he wrote a book with the same title. So maybe you're going for a brand recognition. And so those are the three main types of titles I like to think about using. Number one, one word titles, number two framework titles, and number three brand titles. What it will do is eliminate the overwhelm if you just focus on these three. Your book can't be any, can't be titled anything. It has to be one of these three. Now, framework titles can be an awesome launching point for a new business or a new product. Even if you don't have your own framework, you can create one. So if you were writing a book, you have steps, you're going to teach somebody how to do it. You could come up with a name for that and that be the framework that you name the book after. Okay, so kind of how you choose a title. But keep in mind, a title does not need to perfectly describe what you're going to teach. It needs to hook the reader, it needs to drive curiosity. It is the headline in copy. Right. So hook them, bring them deeper. One word framework or brand, either one of those make great titles to a book. And approaching my five minute mark. So we're going to have to do subtitle in the next episode.