The cost of the wrong book title
Great ideas and great writing make books succeed, even if the title is not perfect. While it pays to put effort into the perfect title, you’re almost certainly overthinking it.
Truths:
- A great book is based on a great idea.
- A well-written book based on a great idea will succeed, even without the perfect title.
- Half of book titles change between the proposal and publication.
- Subtitles change continuously.
- Overthinking titles is natural, but avoidable.
Some great books with the wrong title
MIT Professor Clayton Christensen was brilliant. He invented the concept of business disruption. If you know Christensen, you likely think of him as “the disruption guy.”
His book on disruption doesn’t even mention disruption in the title. Do you remember the title of the book?
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.
Some of you knew that. But I’m betting a lot more people know about disruption than know about The Innovator’s Dilemma. The idea made the book famous, not the title. And in the updated edition, the publisher changed the subtitle.
If I could go back in time and whisper in the ear of young professor Christensen, I’d tell him to title his book Disruptive Innovation. His powerful idea belonged in the title.
The idea of disruption spread because it was an incredible new idea, well supported, that made perfect sense and explained a lot about the world. The title was an acceptable handle for that, even if it wasn’t perfect. We may remember it as a great title, but there is no proof of that. We can only prove it is the title of a great book, so in hindsight we think of it as a great title.
Disruptive Innovation as a title might have spread the idea a little faster, but The Innovator’s Dilemma was fine. The idea mattered more than the title.
Consider another example. Have you heard of Net Promoter Score (NPS)? It’s an idea that has spread widely throughout the business world. Fred Reichheld of Bain & Co. introduced it in a book that made the compelling argument that you could predict a company’s sustainable growth a single simple customer survey question.
What’s the title of his book?
The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth
In retrospect, it might have been better to title it The Net Promoter Question. The Net Promoter idea was more central than “the ultimate question.”
The idea of Net Promoter spread. The title was sufficient to support that. As with The Innovator’s Dilemma, the idea propelled the book, not the title.
It’s telling that the update to the book was called The Ultimate Question 2.0: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World. Because by then, it was clear that Net Promoter was the recognizable brand, not “The Ultimate Question.”
One more. I bet you’ve heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s breakout book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
The reason you’ve heard of it is that Malcolm Gladwell is a great and compelling writer. The book basically explained how virality works for ideas. It could easily have been titled How Ideas Spread: Three Rules That Predict What Goes Viral. Of course, The Tipping Point was a simple title for a powerful idea by a great writer. That was sufficient. In retrospect, the most important words on the cover of the book were “by Malcolm Gladwell.” Gladwell was the brand name, not “The Tipping Point.”
We rewrite the history of these books in our minds. We believe that catchy titles made them great. In fact, the ideas and the compelling way that the authors explained those ideas made them great. That, combined with excellent promotion, got them going and kept them generating word-of-mouth. The titles get the credit, but they were actually monikers attached to great ideas in great books. We look back at the success and imagine that the title created that success, when there is no evidence for that thesis.
Book titles shift as you write them
I’ve been involved with around 70 nonfiction books as author, ghostwriter, editor, or coach. I’ve helped craft dozens and dozens of book proposals, many of which were published by major publishers.
About half of the books were published with the title that was in the original proposal. Half were published with a different title that emerged during the writing process.
Some titles just feel right. Everybody from the author to the editor to the publisher says “Yes, that’s the right title for this book.” So they stick. For my books Groundswell and Writing Without Bullshit, we hit on the title early and stuck with it.
Some titles feel right when you propose them. Then you write the book. You surface a better idea. You give the book a different title. This can be a gut-wrenching decision, but nobody outside the publishing process even knows you did this.
In contrast to titles, subtitles shift constantly. You don’t really know what is the most important thing about your book and how best to explain it until you’ve written it. Different subtitles occur to you as you are writing. Eventually, you settle on one. But publishers often change the subtitle between editions, as they learn what it is about the book that readers are attracted to.
All of this shifting around can feel jarring. Try to get past that. Ideas matter. Writing matters. Titles matter, too, but the title should serve the book, not the other way around.
How to think about titles
When I begin working with an author, the first thing we do is an idea development session. That session is focused on the title and subtitle. That’s how we drill down into what the author’s unique idea is and how we might get that idea across in a few words.
It’s important that the title is unique, since you don’t want people to confuse it with other books. It’s important that the title is catchy, since you want people to talk about it. And of course, it’s important that the title is connected to the book idea.
We write subtitles, too, because two or three words is usually insufficient to explain what the book is about. The subtitle explains and deepens the book concept.
Once that exercise is done, we can work on the table of contents and start writing the book — and if we’re seeking a traditional publisher, the book proposal.
Our work reinforces the idea that the book title is supremely important. But the truth is, for a great book, it’s not.
The idea is important.
The writing is important.
If the idea and the writing are great and the promotion plan is strong, the proposal will sell and the book will succeed. Publishers buy book proposals with imperfect titles all the time; they know they can fix it. And readers buy books with imperfect titles, too.
If they love the book they talk about the title fondly. That’s like feeling love towards your lover’s name, rather than your lover. You feel fondly about them because they’re awesome, not because of their name.
So put an appropriate amount of effort into your book title. But don’t obsess, and be willing to consider changing it, even after it seems settled. It matters, but it’s not what matters most.
Brilliant! Titles are actually hard to decide on. I’ve had times when we gathered a group of beta readers and proposed titles to them to see which one might stick, and the results were less than inspiring. I try to do exactly what you describe here – and generally we don’t keep the ‘original’ title because a new one surfaces as we write the book. This should be required reading for all authors and book coaches.
I couldn’t agree more. For The Catalysts: The Accelerating Forces Forging the New World Financial Order, we wound up sticking with the title and subtitle from our idea session. Other times, though, I’ve gone back to publishers with a better subtitle. That latter is definitely more fluid.