Brainstorming
Last night I attended a cocktail party (an event designed to raise the profile of the charity I chair, Girls Write Now, with women in publishing), and fell into conversation with one of my favorite leaders, innovators and prognosticators in the publishing industry, Jane Friedman. (No, not that Jane Friedman, though she's fabulous too.) Jane has lived many lives in her publishing career, and is credited with, among other things, inventing the author tour by taking Julia Child on the road. Her latest incarnation is as head of the digital publisher and multimedia content company Open Road Media. Jane is always up to something exciting, and a story she told about her latest project last night caught my attention. On Tuesday, Open Road reissued William Broyles Jr.'s memoir "Brothers In Arms" (the book that inspired the television series China Beach) but with a new title. Or, more accurately, with an old title, the title the author always wanted in the first place: "Goodbye Vietnam." That title gave me chills. The first title made me think of Dire Straits (dating myself), and has now become the name of smash hit violent video game series.
Which got me to thinking: when it comes to a title, who knows best? The author, or the marketing department?
I had a truly terrible title for my first book. Taken from a line in my vows, it was "The Rest of My Life Will Never Be Long Enough." My publisher, thank god, came up with the far catchier "I Do But I Don't," though the risk of a catchy title is that its very catchiness will catch up with you -- if you search "I Do But I Don't" on Amazon, you will find "I Do (But I Don't)" the A&E movie starring Denise Richards, "I Do & I Don't," a 2010 comedy starring Jane Lynch, and a whole bunch of other things, and it will take you a heck of a lot of scrolling to find my book. (I realize this is also because my book is out of print.) My agent and I battled over the subtitle with the publisher, however, as many writers I know have, and this battle is glaringly in evidence when you look at the hardback cover of my book versus the paperback. (Hint, the subtitles are not the same.) Titles and subtitles are hugely important, of course -- part of the reason we changed my subtitle for the paperback was that the original subtitle implied I'd written a how-two book, which my book decidedly wasn't, leading to some pissed off readers who felt they'd been sold a false bill of goods. And a great title can be so great it has value all on its own; I actually know authors who have had only the titles of their books optioned by television production companies, not the books themselves.
So I want to know: have you ever battled a publisher over a title or a subtitle? Have you ever been saved by a savvier soul than yourself (as I was), or condemned by a fundamental misunderstanding of your book to misrepresent it in the marketplace (as I, with my original subtitle, was too)? Alternatively, have you ever had a title-battle with yourself, an editor, or a friend?
Please feel free to share multiple titles and their more or less fortunate incarnations. I'd love to see them. Oh and a final note...I just typed the working title of my novel into Amazon books' search bar and found no fewer than SIX books of the same name. Back to the drawing board? Or does it matter?
I love "Cutting Teeth!"
Thank you so much, Deborah!
Good choice Julia Fierro! Best of luck with your book! I will look for it when it comes out. We "She Write" authors should stick together and support each other!!!
Hi Kamy!
When my novel sold a few months ago the title was the unwieldy the End of the World As We Know It. Phew. Too much to type. After giving my editor and the publicity team many title options, they finally okayed my new, and hopefully final title -- Cutting Teeth, out March 2014 via St. Martin's Press.
When I tell people the title BEFORE I reveal the subject, they look a bit lost for a moment, but (and I hope this works well enough) intrigued. When I reveal that the novel is about parents to young children, I see the a-ha light flicker in their faces and they say, Oh, of course!
It is so hard to know what is best. I do think this is the strongest of the many man titles I came up with, so there's always that.
Take care,
Julia Fierro
http:/
A few more thoughts...@Catherine thanks for bringing up the issue of foreign editions -- the title changes for those can be so illuminating. And I wish I knew more about the Great Gatsby title fight, I will have to investigate! @Pamela, your comment makes me feel all the better about the fact that I will publish my novel first with She Writes Press, and if I end up doing a deal with a commercial house later, I will already have established the title on my own terms. It's true that it's one of the biggest fights authors and their publishers have. And @Kelly, "My Lead Dog Was A Lesbian"??? I am afraid none of us will ever top that!
Oh my gosh, these stories are fascinating! I knew this was a widespread phenomenon but hearing the specifics of your stories (135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes instead of "Salt and Pepper, A Love Story"?) is so fascinating and helpful. And @Caroline you are so right about "Beautiful." Enough of that!
I was able to get cover approval for the revised book this time around. I could not get an agreement, on paper, about the title. But, I know I'm right, and I think they fundamentally agree with me. The editor is waiting for marketing to weigh in I believe. I will continue pushing for the right title: Room In The Heart! You are right about "having a good track record," being an important factor in how much you can get them to go along with.
One way to help mitigate the frustration a lot of us feel when it comes to titles and art work is to try to get consultation or approval rights written into your contract. I've done it several times and also try to have approval rights for the copy editor, as well. If you have a good track record, most publishers will go along with it.
I understand from my published friends that the 2 biggest "fights" they have with their publishers are over the book title and cover artwork. Personally, I'd welcome a publisher's marketing experience to help with my title!
A great title can make a book jump off the shelf. My favorite one is for a memoir written by a reporter who experienced the Iditarod -- you know, the Alaskan dog sled marathon. The author explored the race from every angle: From the communities the race raced through to the personalities of "his" dogs. Title? My Lead Dog Was a Lesbian.
Wish I could come up with something as unique and witty!
Kelly Hayes-Raitt
Oh man, at this point, I'd pay someone to come up with a title for me. I've been working on my book for 5 years and still don't have a title. When I tell people about my book, that is almost always the first thing they ask for. When I can't tell them, I feel like I don't sound serious about my beloved WIP.
My Faith Beyond Belief: Stories of Good People Who Left Their Church Behind (Quest Books, 2012) started out as just Beyond Belief (with the same subtitle) But...there were too many other books by that name. Then it was supposed to become In Good Faith, and then Leaps of Faith, (all before publication) before coming back full circle to almost the original title. As it turns out, I am very grateful for the added word. It really adds clarity to what the book is about.
Desperation may prompt the publisher to change the title from the hardback to the paperback. My 17 Morton Street (St. Martin's Press) became Downtown Women in paper. In Europe it had two more titles, choices which surprised me: In German it was Und dann kam Carlo (Then Came Carlo) and in Dutch it was Herrie in Huis (Tumult in the House). These sound like four different books!
That was supposed to be "extreme circumstances"! Also, I should add that I wrote a novel, currently making the rounds with literary agents, titled "Bad Girls." Not sure if it helps or hurts, sometimes I think its perfect, sometimes I think it sounds like a porn movie. We'll see.
Been there! I wrote a non-fiction book about grandparents raising grandchildren. However, the book, at its core, is about families and their struggles to keep going under circumstances. It was written for a general audience and its intended title was, Room In The Heart (taken from a poem) with a subtitle of Raising Our Children's Children. The publisher wanted only to focus on grandparents in that particular circumstance and so narrowed the scope by paring the title down to Raising Our Children's Children. The book did just ok. Now, I have a new publisher who will be re-releasing the revised book next spring and he is open - though not 100% committed on paper - to a new title, the intended title of Room In The Heart along with a new cover. I think they agree that the book is a good, read, full of life and death drama, of healing and hope and deserves a wider audience. Fingers crossed!
"Fast Times in Palestine" came to my mind two years before I even started writing the book (and so did the image on the cover, of a silhouette of a woman smoking a hookah). I ended up self-publishing, so I got my way on everything. Then when the book got picked up by a publisher, suddenly I had to share control. Luckily the book had been doing well with that title, and was starting to be well-known, and they liked it, so we kept it. It's hard to imagine negotiating that, too -- it was difficult enough giving my baby a new face, much less a new name, too!
My second book about Native American women was titled "Native Sisters." Last minute the publisher didn't like it and said "we'll call it Squaw." Yikes, the worst, an insult. They gave me 24 hours to come up with a new title. I choose "Daughters of the Earth" and it has been that since 1978 except in German where it is "Tocher de Erde." Other titles along the way came easier with no push back. Now I have no idea what to call my first novel. Truly no idea.
somehow I think there are trends in titles -- the word BEAUTIFUL keeps coming up in bestsellers. I wrote a memoir with my sister (her story, published by Rodale) and I rue to this day the title -- lesson learned:go with your gut!!
On the other hand, of course, F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to call "The Great Gatsby" by the title "The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg", and then, just as they went to press, I think, he wanted to call it "Under the Red, White, And Blue'. Thank goodness editor Maxwell Perkins would have none of this. Anyone remember the specifics? Where would Fitzgerald have been without Perkins? And do editors this great exist today? Can anybody name a few?
I've had battles over subsequent books, as well. Marketing departments tend to go with something very literal, especially with books that include recipes. But I don't write recipe books--I write books that combine a fair amount of narrative with recipes. When I wrote "Salt & Pepper" I wanted to call it "Salt & Pepper, A Love Story, with Recipes." But because the love story involved my love of salt and of pepper, the editor couldn't go there, even though the narrative is just that, a love story. I still cringe when I see the subtitle, "135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes," though it's better than an earlier suggestion, "135 Perfectly Seasoned Recipes for a Cook's Best Friends." Say what? The best friends were supposedly salt and pepper. Terrible! Same thing happened with my book about BLTs. I wanted an evocative title that suggested there was a good story inside but ended up with "The BLT Cookbook."
USA Network hired me to write a movie which had a title so bad that it does not deserve repeating. When I turned in the script, I changed the title to "Perfect Crime" because...well...it was about someone who thought he had committed the, um, perfect crime. No one liked my title, despite my work getting the project greenlit. So while we were shooting, the network arranged several focus groups in midwest malls. I then got a very excited call from the network, informing me (sans memory or sense of the ironic) that several titles had been tested. And the focus groups "picked"...that's right..."Perfect Crime" as the title. The film aired shortly after, with the highest Nielsen rating to that date for USA Network. Just another day in the life of a writer...
I had a big and rather amusing battle over the title of my first book, published in 1990. My working title, which I loved, was "A Cook's Tour of Sonoma." It came back to me as "The Sonoma Food Book," which, of course, I rejected. We went back and forth with the marketing department, my editor playing the go-between. Every title suggested was dull and flat. Finally, my editor called and asked what I thought of "A Cook's Tour of Sonoma." Sheeesh! How much time had we wasted? The marketing department took credit for the title and never acknowledged we had simply come full circle.
I am pretty bad at titles too -- in my first book, I just called the chapters "The Ring" "The Dress" etc.! I think the working title approach is a good one, and if you can find someone who has a knack they can help. On the other hand some writers have titles they really love, and want to stick with...
Being as yet an unpublished author, I can' attest to having fought anyone but myself over a title. But I can say that titles are my nemesis. So any help I might get would definitely be welcome, within certain parameters of course.
I absolutely despise titling books, stories, etc. To me, it's one of the hardest parts of writing. How do you sum up everything in a phrase or word? I have what I call a "working title" while I write. Something to call the piece, and sometime it sticks to the end, and other times (most times) I try to come up with something better. As far as being "catchy," I try not to worry about that. I want something that can speak for the piece, and maybe intrigue people at the same time.
I haven't battled with a book title, but in my freelance work, I give my articles titles hoping the editors will change it. They almost always do better, catchier titles that fit the magazine. It is not my strength. I also realize an article or blog title isn't near as consequential as a book title.