Throughout the history of publishing, the title has played a significant role in the successful marketing of the book. While this has always been true – the title you choose for your book is more important than ever because potential book buyers will be using the internet to find and buy your book as well.
Once upon a time, your book only had to compete with the other few dozen titles available on the shelves of the local book store. Even with the development of chain bookstores like B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and the subsequent entry of the ” book superstores” like Barnes and Noble for example, your book only had to “compete” with the other books that were actually sitting on the shelves available for sale. In those days, a catchy title – like “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” was often enough to get your book to stand out from the dozens of other books available for sale in your genre.
Today your book’s buyers are as likely to be shopping online for books as they are to take a trip to the local bookstore. When those book buyers are shopping online – if you haven’t done any other marketing for your book – they’ll be shopping for books on a particular topic.
For example, if you’ve written a book about moving from the US to Australia – remember that there are literally THOUSANDS of searches being done each month online by people seeking that information. You can use one of the many free keyword research tools to show you exactly what words people are using when they’re searching for this information.
According to Google – 720 people searched for the term “moving from the us to australia” last month while 880 searched for “how to move to australia”. If you’re the author of a book on your move from the US to Australia – including those “keyword search terms” in your title will help those people who are searching for this information find your book.
I once worked with an author who wrote just such a book. Unfortunately he was so invested in his book’s original “catchy” title that he refused to even include these keywords in any part of his title. Four years later, dismal book sales have discouraged this author to the point of abandoning his dream of being a successful author. This author’s book provided wonderful insight as to what it is really like to move from the US to Australia – but because his books’ title didn’t include any of those “keywords” – hundreds of prospective book buyers will never know his book is available.
On the other end of the spectrum, when Jason Alba wrote his book “I’m On LinkedIn – Now What???” he made certain to include the essential keyword term “LinkedIn” in his book’s title. At the time of the book’s publication – the book became an instant hit and has since spawned a lot of copycats because of the book’s success. Jason is now living the life of a successful author – in part because he carefully chose the title of his book.
As you choose the title of your book – include essential “keywords” in your title. It will help book buyers find your book whether they’re searching the web with Google or searching Amazon for a specific resource.
