authenticguccishoes

The title of a book, along with maybe the cover, is most often what’s going to lead a potential reader to pick up your baby book. Which isn’t to say coming up with a good one is easy. To the contrary, it’s the sort of thing, like naming a band, that can cause everyone involved a lot of agony, particularly when an author has settled on something very early in the process and someone else (usually involved in selling it) however many months or years later decides that the book might be better served with something different.

So, how do we know if we have a good title? According to author Bennett Madison, there’s only one way: “Before you decide on your title for real, practice telling it to people at parties. If you can do it without cringing/wincing it’s the perfect title!”

Okay, now that you have your title in place (at least in from your vantage point) and your book is in production, what happens next? With a thought to find out, we asked a few authors—including Laurie Frankel, Suzanne Morrison, Richard Rushfield and Urban Waite—the following set of questions:

    Did the title of your book(s) change between selling your manuscript, submission, and publication?

    If so, who instigated the title change? Did your agent get involved at any point? Did your contract have any title provisions that came into play?

    Did you create the new title of the book or select one that was offered to you? Can you share some of the suggestions that were proposed?

    Did you “push back” in any way w/r/t the new title, and did the process cause any emotional or other trauma? (If so, did you recover?)

Let's dive in!