Book Titles that Make Big Bucks
BY T. McDONALD
Do you know how readers decide to buy a
book? 1) They get a referral from a friend. 2) They see an interesting
book title on the best-seller list. 3) They look up a topic (generally
non-fiction) and look for a book closest to their interest (generally
based on titles). 4) They browse in the bookstore looking for an
interesting title – then they read the book jacket copy. 5) They look on
an Internet bookseller’s website to find out what other people bought
under that title or subject, then they look at book reviews. 6) Finally,
generally based on title and book jacket copy or book reviews, they buy
your book.
Have you ever bought a book
just because of the title? I remember one time when I was
browsing in a local bookstore and the book title I was looking
at was so provocative; I just had to have it. It turned out to
be a humor book, very funny and entertaining. But I never
would have purchased the book if it weren’t for the title. I
wouldn’t have even noticed it! Many other times I’ve seen ads
for business books relating to marketing or sales and found an
irresistible title, I simply had to have it!
Here’s how a great title
helped to sell 300,000 books while a poorly chosen title for
the same book sold only 1,500 copies. Just as a headline can
make all the difference in an ad, so the title of your book,
especially a non-fiction one, can make the difference between
dramatic success (300,000 copies sold) and failure (1,500
copies sold). Would you like to know the secrets of what makes
the difference?
For example, here are two
actual titles for the same book that were tested, one against
the other. One of these was a winner and the other a loser.
The Squash Book vs. The Zucchini Cookbook.
In this case, the second book
title did better than the first (300,000 copies sold) because
it was more specific, letting people know that it was about
zucchini squash. It also addressed the needs of the many
people who grow zucchini in their yards and don’t know what to
do with them all. In addition, the title, The Zucchini
Cookbook, lets people know that this was a cookbook and
not a book about how to grow the vegetable or some other topic
related to zucchini. The Squash Book only sold 1,500
copies! So, does being specific sell? You won’t know until you
test.
This particular example
underlines the importance of testing your title before you
actually publish your book. Try testing several good book
titles, then pick the one that did best, you’ll be a lot
closer to sales success than by just guessing.
An aspiring author created
what he thought was a cute book title, Swimming Chickens.
Later he decided that the dismal sales of his literary effort
were due to the title he had chosen so he came up with a new
one. After reviewing the "hot" topics in the National
Enquirer and other such publications he came up with this
remarkably successful title: Lose Weight Through
Great Sex With Celebrities: The Elvis Way. The book sold
several hundred thousand copies and you can still find it on
Amazon.com.
Do you think that only short
titles sell? There are many examples of direct response
marketers who have used long titles (up to 17 words) and have
still been very successful, often more successful than with
short titles. The interesting thing is that direct marketers
live or die through the success of their book sales so they
test everything before they make a big sales effort.
Here’s an example of a case in
which a direct marketer bought the rights to an excellent
book, with a very short title, that was not making money. He
changed the title, then took the book from almost no sales to
hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales. The original losing
title was The Letter Book and the multi-million dollar
winning title was Slash Your Letter Writing Time by 80% and
Write Better Letters. Which version would you buy?
Another remarkable example of
improved sales with a better title involved a self-published
book called The Entrepreneurs’ Manual, which sold only
12 copies. The direct marketing savvy author renamed the book
Why SOB's Succeed and Nice Guys Fail in Business and
sold 700,000 copies over a period of several years.
When creating your book title,
be sure to use important keywords if you plan to sell it
online. I recently came across a book about Internet auctions
that did not have the keyword eBay in the title. Even though
the book received good reviews, prospective buyers overlooked
it, because when someone typed in eBay, this excellent auction
book did not show up. Since eBay is the premier auction site
on the Internet, the keyword eBay should certainly be included
in the title of any such book.
Now you have seen the power of
a good book title in action. Many authors, publishers and
self-publishers have used ideas similar to the ones in this
article to turn book sales disasters into book sales success!
Copyright © 2005 Teddi
McDonald
Teddi McDonald has been an
Internet marketer and copywriter for over 7 years. She writes
winning Internet sales copy and helps clients earn more money
from their websites. Contact her through
her website.
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