Market research consistently finds that you have 20 seconds, tops, to capture people's attention and get them committed to hearing you out. It's likely that the first five seconds are the all-important ones in determining whether they look further or lose interest. In a written piece, those first few seconds are when your title hits them. It may well be the deciding factor in whether a reader who is overloaded with stimuli and options will look further. A successful title for your book, article, newspaper or web page is both engaging and informative. It hooks the reader with curiosity and self-interest, by answering the perennial question, "What's in it for me?" You'll want to work as hard on that as you do on those crucial first paragraphs.
Maybe you're not aiming for a bestselling book at this stage. Maybe you just want to get a couple of articles into a magazine or local metaphysical journal as a way to promote your services. Or maybe you're struggling to write something for your web site so visitors know more about what you do. In order to compete with the many other writers who pitch articles to these media-or with other practitioners in the same discipline as yours-a memorable title has the edge in grabbing and holding the attention of your intended audience. Consider all the time you spent crafting your piece-isn't it worth spending a bit more time to make sure it gets read?
A good free resource for trying out your title before you submit it is Lulu's online Title Scorer at: http://www.lulu.com/titlescorer/. Lulu is one of the fastest-growing source of Print on Demand books. They commissioned a team of world-class statisticians to study the titles of New York Times Bestsellers between 1955 and 2004 and then compare them with less successful authors. The statisticians developed a program that predicts the chances of any given title becoming a bestseller. Follow-up research on more recent bestsellers shows that their program works correctly 70% of the time. At other times, they admit it tanks completely-giving a low score to what they call "weird" books like The Da Vinci Code.
The program was primarily designed for mainstream fiction, so I tested how well it works with highly successful metaphysical and spiritual titles, with mixed results. Here's how some bestselling authors of recent years fared:
Left Behind, Jerry B. Jenkin's series on "The Rapture" 79.1%
The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne 41.4%
The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer 41.4%
Chicken Soup for the Soul, by Jack Canfield et al. 26.3%
Conversations with God, by Neale Donald Walsch 10.2%
Visits from the Afterlife, by Sylvia Browne 10.2%
The program doesn't seem to take the name recognition into account, and several of these authors are now so successful that anything they write hits the bestseller list the same week they come out. This could account for the failure of several metaphysical giants to score well on book titles. However, it would be interesting to see how accurately it predicted the success of their earliest titles, before their names were golden.
I then tested the program with some of my own more successful titles, and it said: Healing Pluto Problems, (45,000 English copies, many translations) 55.4%; Moon Signs, (Mainstream publisher, 26,000 English Copies, several translations) 10.2%; and An Astrological Guide to Self-Awareness (30,000 English copies, many translations) 10.2%. Fair enough-I haven't exactly gotten rich off my writings! However, considering that two of my scores were the same as Sylvia Browne's, it does suggest a somewhat anti-metaphysical bias built into the test.
That noted, you may want to take what Lulu predicts about your metaphysically oriented title with somewhat of a grain of salt-but then, metaphysical books by unknown authors are not often ranked among the top sellers. Still, an impactful title is more likely to grab an editor's attention and appeal to a reader, so it's worth working with this tool until your title is as strong as you can possibly make it.
A new and powerful feature, Title Fight, allows you to compare two titles that you're considering, so that you discover which has the better chance of selling. I tried two variations for a hypothetical project, a metaphysical how-to book on positive thinking. The first, Winning Ideas for You, had only a 10.2% chance of being a bestseller. The second, How your Thoughts Can Turn Failure into Success, had a 55.4% chance.
Titles that Memories are Made from
As I sought more examples of what makes a great title, the list I compiled included many books that changed my life and the lives of other metaphysical seekers. Perhaps they were some of your favorites too. The very names evoke memories of as well as what our lives were like at the time they were published, as well as the changes and illuminations they ushered into being,. Here are some of them-along with Lulu's edict on their chances of success:
The Road Less Traveled, M. Scott Peck 26.3%
What Color is your Parachute? Richard Nelson Bolles 44.2%
Why People Don't Heal-and How They Can, Caroline Myss 55.4%
It Was on Fire When I lay Down on It, Robert Fulghum 44.2%
Evocative, aren't they? Can you imagine these books with another title? A memorable title that hooks the reader is an asset in articles, books, and other writing efforts.
When I squared off two possible titles for this article, the first one I had chosen-"Entitled to be Published!"-scored only 8.6%. while the alternate-"Making your Title Marketable"-had a 20.4% chance. I still fancied the neat turn of phrase in the first title, but, then, thickheaded ignoring of sound advice is doubtlessly one of the reasons I'm not a bestselling author YET. Reworking the name doubled its chances: "Are You Entitled to be Published?" I then wondered if the subtitle, not included in the score, would fare better. "Great Titles Grab Readers' Attention" scored 35.9%, so it became the final title. I decided to Listen to Lulu on book projects from here on out. Maybe you should, too!
Note: This article is an excerpt from Donna's booklet of writing tips, the text for her online writing seminars.
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