Authors have questions. Once they start working on a book, the same things seem to come up over and over. So let’s get you some answers. Is my idea worth writing a book about? An idea worthy of a whole book should be big enough to have a set of nonobvious consequences. You should have…
Start with this: the purpose of a title is as a handle for your book. You can’t explain a whole book in a few words, but you can often come up with a few words that people will connect with your book in their minds. These are the qualities of an awesome title: I recently…
One of the most creative things I do is to help authors select titles and subtitles for their books. While doing a book titling brainstorm yesterday, I asked the AI writing tool ChatGPT to come up with suggestions; it did a creditable job and generated some subtitle text we may end up using. But is…
When I help authors, I often start with a brainstorm to identify a great title and subtitle. But perversely, my brain recently coughed up some titles unconnected to actual book projects. Since there are no books yet, I offer them to you. Steal my title and write the book. All I ask is that you…
I posted this on Facebook: Helping an author come up with the perfect book title is better than sex. I think the responses revealed more about other people than they do about me. Yes, I love my job. One of the best parts of that is working with authors. One of the best parts of…
A client of mine is planning on releasing a new book with a clever title. He asked “How can I protect the title so no one else can publish a book with the same title?” “You can’t,” I responded. (That didn’t make him happy.) You cannot copyright a book title. It is too short. You…
Without Bullshit here, analyzing why so many book titles now have obscene words in them. Get your hypocrisy giggles out of the way, first. This is a serious analysis. If curse words offend you, don’t read on. (If that really is you, how did you even get here?) Take a look at any bestseller list….
It’s easy to tell people “I have a book idea.” But before you invest your time in writing, you need to make sure that idea is powerful enough to build a book on. Here are 11 questions to ask yourself before you exert significant effort towards becoming a nonfiction author. If you can’t answer these…
It’s time to come up with a title for your book. “I want something iconic,” you’re thinking. “Like Lean In. Or The Tipping Point. Or Made to Stick.” You are deluded. And your delusion is leading you astray. These books sold because of huge promotion (Lean In) and incredible ideas and writing. You think they are great titles…