What makes a good book title?

Here’s a secret: many, many, many titles are changed once a publisher gets hold of them. In fact, every single one of my book titles has changed, if you can believe it.

- from Alison Winn Scotch, writer

So if you’re working with editors and publishing experts, choosing titles isn’t going to be a major issue for you. And here’s an editor’s view:

Well, I will admit to thinking that if Marketing truly had their way, the title for every book would be an artless string of words broadcasting its selling appeal. The Hunger Games would be called ACTION PACKED DYSTOPIAN LOVE TRIANGLE .

- from Boxcars, Books and a Blog

Those of us without publishers and editors get to choose our own titles: a great privilege as well as a heavy burden, at times.

How We Chose Our app Title

I’m not good at choosing titles for my own stories. I try not to worry about them too much until I’ve finished writing – but filenames need something in order to be saved, and in the case of app development, the project needs a title before the first byte of code is entered, and according to the developer, changing it is a right pain in the butt.

We came up with The Artifacts as a the title for our storybook app after brainstorming as many possibilities as we could. It wasn’t a long list. The Artifacts is a title that did not come easily at all.

The Apple app store is set up in such a way that no two apps can have the same title, and with all the apps out there, it’s actually amazing that there are any original titles left. I wonder how much harder it will be to title apps in fifty or a hundred years’ time! We originally had ‘Strongbox’, but this had already been taken by someone who wrote a password management app. I have to admit, it does sound like a password manager, so I couldn’t bemoan the fact that we didn’t get in quickly enough!

I regret that The Artifacts can also be spelt ‘The Artefacts’. This is a minor nuisance, though I did consider this before we chose it, and concluded that most people would spell it with an ‘i’. I came to this conclusion after doing Google searches for both spellings, and ‘artifacts’ had far more returns than ‘artefacts’. I would recommend doing the same if you’re considering a title which contains a word with an alternate spelling.

Our app is slightly harder to find than it might be due to an entire series of very popular apps with ‘Mahjong Artifacts’ in the title.

So, as you can see, in these days of the Internet we require some extra jobs from our titles. Not only should they be appropriate to the story’s themes, audience, atmosphere and genre, but we should be wearing our SEO hats as well.

We have yet to see whether The Artifacts is a good name for a children’s book, and the truth is, we’ll never really know if we’d have been better off choosing a different one. There’s no control group for these things!

Although The Artifacts is the best we could come up with at the time, I do wonder what a publishing expert would have to say about it. Maybe the reason nobody had bagsied it first is because it’s just not a very attractive title! We might have called it ‘Asaf’s Artifacts’, which would place it more firmly as a children’s book, but I have a personal aversion towards alliterative titles. (I’m not the only one.) This may be completely unjustified. Perhaps when choosing titles we should cast aside personal preferences and peeves?

HOW DO YOU CHOOSE YOUR TITLES?

We’re all choosing titles all the time. Whether it’s a blog post or a short story, for an app or an essay, or a folder for your family photos, a label for a drop file, or for making a playlist on iTunes, choosing titles is, most of the time, a non-event.

When I’m writing a short story, I usually have an outstandingly crappy title until I’ve finished. Then I put the ‘writing part’ of my brain to rest and think really, really hard only about the title. I try to see the story from a global point of view – its themes and message. For me, titles usually don’t happen ‘organically’. I really need to focus my mind and I agree with Miss Snark when she says:

It seems to me that titling is a separate skill [from writing itself].

- Miss Snark

Of course, it’s easier to start with what not to do!

Writers: If you want to give your MC a certain name just so your title can be a pun using that name, don’t do it.

- @sarahlapolla

Related: the discomfiting trend of publishers relying on puns or clichés in book titles. And I’m sure there are plenty more oddly specific tips to be had if you’re an editor and you’ve seen them all.

Taking a random sample of books which I ‘saw’ people buy on Book Depository (no, that’s not so creepy – it’s a widget on their site), here are a few titles which must have jumped out at me at some stage. Others come from my own bookshelf and Best Of lists from last year.

TITLES WHICH INCLUDE WORDS YOU MIGHT FIND ON THE COVER OF A WOMEN’S MAGAZINE

This kind of title promises some sort of mystery to follow, a secret shared, or implies some sort of pact between author and reader.

• Notes On A Scandal by Zoe Heller
• The Outcast by Sadie Jones
• The True Story of Butterfish by Nick Hornby

Although none of those books is the slightest bit reminiscent of a women’s mag, I would imagine the words ‘scandal’, ‘outcast’ and ‘true story’ have a similar psychological effect on a consumer: salaciousness and schadenfreude.

AMBIGUOUS

• Stranger Magic by Marina Warner

By ‘ambiguous’ I mean: contains homophones. ‘Stranger’ has two meanings here, and I haven’t read that book, but ideally I suppose the book is about both senses of the word. This title jumped out at me because the title of one of my own short stories is ‘How To Leave A Stranger’. In that case, ‘leave’ has a double meaning: ‘How to get away from someone you don’t know very well’ and ‘How to meet with a stranger for a limited period of time and yet fail to get to know them at all’.

There are also titles with metaphorical double meanings, like most episodes of Mad Men, for instance, which are inclined to refer both to something literal in the episode and to something figurative in the characters’ arcs. I like titles that can achieve more than one task at once like that; the title then becomes a sort of easter egg, in that you don’t fully understand it until you’ve read the story or seen the episode, thus creating a ‘them’ and ‘us’ division between those who know the story and those who don’t. Those who don’t know are forever locked out… Okay, now I’m probably turning this whole title thing into a conspiracy theory.

TARGETED AT A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE

• Adverbs (I’m sure I wouldn’t have picked up Daniel Handler’s short story collection if I weren’t interested in language. I’d say short story writers have more leeway for creativity and ambiguity and all sorts in titles, because it seems to be so that only the most avid of readers pick up short stories in the first place.)
• Lipstick Jungle (How many blokes picked this one up?)

PROVOCATIVE

• Stupid White Men by Michael Moore

As a white man himself, Michael Moore gets away with this title (insofar as he gets away with anything), but I can see how it would be easy to put your foot in it.

THE LANGUAGE OF ADVERTISING

• 10 Short Stories You Must Read This Year
• Get Ahead! Medicine 
• Praise! Our Songs And Hymns
• Think And Grow Rich
• Change Your Thinking

Actually I’ve heard a number of people moan about the title of this series, which comes out annually in Australia as part of National Reading Month (or whatever it’s called). There’s this rebel in all of us which makes us avoid doing what we’re told to do, or what we know we’re meant to do, so when I’m told I ‘must’ read these stories, I feel like I’m back at school, preparing for an English exam.

Here’s another similar but worse example: Stop What You’re Doing And Read This! with a response from author Sally Zigmond (who sings its praises but bemoans its bossy title).

WACKY

Wacky titles make me want to pick up the book to see what on earth it’s about. Sometimes I’m thinking, ‘How could someone write a whole book about that?’

• The Never-Ending Days Of Being Dead by Marcus Chown
• Visible Panty Line by Gretel Killeen

Remember when Prince changed his name & no one knew what to call him because no one could say it out loud? Don’t do that to your book.

- @sarahlapolla

I suppose it might be a useful exercise — when completely stuck — to brainstorm a title which fits into each of these categories (which I have completely made up) and see if any seem appropriate.

THE PREDICTABLE

Sometimes it’s best if titles aren’t fancy at all, especially when the author name alone can sell a book.

• The Collected Stories (Grace Paley)
• The Best of John Wyndham
• New Australian Stories 2

THE MATTER-OF-FACT TITLE

I notice that a title consisting of two words tends to sound matter-of-fact, whereas a longer one can sound wacky/pretentious/intriguing (depending, of course on what those words are!)

• Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
• Mad Meg by Sally Morrison
• The Beach by Alex Garland
• The Birds by Daphne du Maurier
• The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

MATTER-OF-FACT BUT SLIGHTLY RIDICULOUS

• Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry

THE JUXTAPOSED TITLE, or doesn’t quite make sense GRAMMATICALLY

• A Good Scent From A Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
• The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
• Ordinary Dogs by Eileen Battersby
• People Who Eat Darkness by Richard Lloyd Parry
• The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky
• The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
• The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje
• The Beautiful Indifference by Sarah Hall
• The Quality of Mercy by Barry Unsworth
• The Disenchantments

This sort of title seems particularly prevalent right now, or perhaps is more indicative of the sorts of books to end up on ‘Best Of’ lists. Some of these titles remind me of Stephen Pinker’s famous: ‘Colorless green ideas sleep furiously’.

FAUX-INSTRUCTIONAL

• How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
• How to Disappear by Duncan Fallowell

MIGHT BE NON-FICTION BUT ISN’T

These titles often require: ‘a novel’ somewhere on the cover

• The Marriage Plot: a novel, by Jeffrey Eugenides
• The Outlaw Album is a collection of stories by Daniel Woodrell
• Salmon Fishing In The Yemen by Paul Today
• A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman by Margaret Drabble
• The Perks Of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

OMINOUS

• Call For The Dead by John Le Carre
• The Church Of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyn
• After the Apocalypse by Maureen McHugh
• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

GRANDIOSE

• How Fiction Works by James Wood

While Woods’ is a brilliant book, in my opinion, the title is grandiose because it’s hardly an encompassing look at How Fiction Works. That would require a tome indeed. Rather, it’s a list of interesting observations, tied together in no discernible comprehensive way.

WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS ABOUT?

• State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
• There But For The: a novel by Ali Smith
• Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells

The Guardian wrote: 

There but for the is a brilliant title for a brilliant novel. Ali Smith invents new forms of fiction in the interstices between parts of a sentence – commenting “but the thing I particularly like about the word but … is that it always takes you off to the side …” 

Which is proof that your title doesn’t actually have to make sense… as long as your book is brilliant, otherwise it probably just looks stupid.

MAIN CHARACTER(s) AS TITLE

• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• Girl With The Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
• Fluff and Billy by Nicola Killen
• The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht
• Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li

SETTING AS TITLE

• Morgan’s Run by Colleen McCullough
• Dublin by Edward Rutherford
• Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

ENTIRE SENTENCES

• One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
•  I Don’t Want to be a Pea! by Ann Bonwill
• I’m A Big Brother

SINGLE WORDS

• Next by James Hynes
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
• Pure by Andrew Miller
• Wish by Peter Goldsworthy
• Prey by Michael Crichton
• Smut by Alan Bennett
• Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

One possible problem with single word titles is that there is no context whatsoever. I recently recommended Michael Crichton’s Prey to a friend who also enjoys thrillers. She responded with, “It’s um… it’s not a religious novel, is it?” So if you have a one word title, you may benefit from an explanatory subtitle.

Snowclones as Title

For a definition of a snowclone, see here.

• Colour Me English by Caryl Phillips
• Cookie Craft
• We Need To Talk About Kelvin by Marcus Chown
• Gay Men Don’t Get Fat by Simon Doonan

Of course, those last three snowclones both came from other hugely successful books of similar titles: Child Craft, We Need To Talk About Kevin and French Women Don’t Get Fat. So now we even have French Children Don’t Throw Food: Parenting Secrets From Paris, by Pamela Druckerman.

MODIFIED CLICHES

• A Match Made In High School by Kristin Walker

MADE UP WORDS

• Atrocitology by Matthew White
• Affluenza by Oliver James
• Retromania by Simon Reynolds
• Mindfulness by Ellen J. Langer
• Robopocalypse by
• The Etymologicon by

Some titles are so successful that the neologisms become part of the common language. The good thing about these is that they’re easy for potential customers can find via a search. The bad thing about some of these is that they’re not that easy to spell.

Related Links:

1. Four Writers Tell About Their Titles

2. A list of books which changed titles between manuscript and publication

3. Criteria for a Killer Title

4. Book Titles In The Form Of Questions from The Guardian

5. Picking Your Perfect Title from Daily Writing Tips

6. Book Title Formulas from BookEnds, LLC

7. Finding (and losing) Book Titles from Beyond The Margins

8. Oddest Book Title Of The Year from Marginal Revolution

9. Why I Came Up With My Title First, and The Story Later, from Beyond The Margins

10. 12 Book Titles That Came From Poems, From Huffington Post

11. The One With All The Episode-Title Formulas from Vulture

Sort of Related Links:

1. How 50 Big Companies Got Their Titles

2. The 8 Principles Of Product Naming

3. 7 Words That Only Bad Movies Have In Their Titles.

Category Vs Genre

Before I started writing I thought the word ‘genre’ sounded a bit wanky, and now I use it all the time, even when talking about music and I’ve no doubt there are friends who consider me a bit wanky for saying it, especially as it sounds ‘a bit French’.

From Google Dictionary:

Since ‘genre’ is such a useful term, once you start making use of it you wonder how you ever got on in the world without it.

By using the word ‘category’, probably. Or ‘type’.

‘Genre’ is such a nice word to say that it’s easy to overuse it, and sometimes ‘genre’ is used where ‘category’ would be a more accurate choice.

Example:

I think it’s a lack of exposure to contemporary YA lit that makes adults refer to it as a “genre.” Much of the time when people say “the YA lit genre,” what they really mean iscategory rather than genre, and that’s fine. However,  I recently attended a talk by an author who had been writing adult genre fiction and was working on her first YA novel, and she kept referring to the characteristics of the YA genre, as if all YA books were somehow fundamentally the same.

- In the library with the leadpipe

The same would apply to short stories. Short story is not a genre; it’s a length.

Likewise, women’s fiction is not a genre; it’s a marketing term.

And if YA is a category rather than a genre, then it follows that there’s no such thing as ‘the genre of children’s literature’. That, too, would be a ‘category’.

Right now I can picture my dad watching the Emmys & muttering “reality shouldn’t even be a category” & my mom telling him to shut up.

- @sarahlapolla

Related Link: Genre Theory — continued, from Michael Rosen.

Are there too many books in the world?

I’ve heard it said a number of times lately: There are too many books around nowadays. (Context most often: There are too many crap books around nowadays.)

Is there any such a thing as ‘too many books’? Here are some arguments both sides.

ON DEVALUATION

AFFIRMATIVE

The sheer number of books devalues content. No one has anywhere near enough time to read them all. So there’s increasing pressure to keep prices low and to give readers more for their money. Authors find it harder and harder to make a living from writing – a select few will always make a lot of money, while the vast majority will hold down a different day job, even those who would be far happier and far more fulfilled if their writing income allowed them to be full-time writers.

NEGATIVE

From a consumer’s point of view, devaluation is not a bad thing. All things devalue over time. Books used to be so prohibitively expensive that only the upper classes could own their own libraries. Isn’t writing a hobby? Should people really expect to be paid full incomes for sitting at computers and making stuff up? Is this what we should value?

ON BUSY LIVES

AFFIRMATIVE

There are so many other things to do now. (Longer working hours, TV, internet browsing, computer games etc.) that the number of writers not only feels disproportionate (to the number of readers) but also a bit misplaced. If consumers would rather play with their smartphone apps, why shouldn’t would-be writers focus their attention on writing those instead, say?

NEGATIVE

But it shouldn’t matter how many other things there are to do – books add value to a culture in a way no other thing can. It’s so subjective anyway. How many readers does each book need? Apps come and go. Books are around forever. It’s quite possible more people will read your book after you’ve died than the sum total of those who read it during your lifetime. I’m not just talking about bestsellers here.

ON FINDING BOOKS

AFFIRMATIVE

As the volume of eBooks grows and grows, the task for readers to find good eBooks becomes more difficult.

NEGATIVE

Or does it? Think of the internet. The volume of internet pages is growing all the time, but we can always find exactly the page we’re looking for because of search engine optimisation, keywords etc. The more internet expands, the more likely it is we’ll find exactly what it is we’re looking for – not less. Surely the same should apply to books, especially as we move into eBooks, which have metadata and keywords to direct them to an appreciative audience.

ON METADATA AND SEARCH ENGINES

AFFIRMATIVE

So readers should have no trouble finding books in theory. As one example, Amazon uses previous purchases to suggest future purchases. But it is a mistake to think that clicks and book metadata have much to do with helping readers to find books. Readers have always found books in other ways – mainly by recommendation and browsing in stores and libraries. Many big companies made the same mistake back in the 90s – putting too much faith in search engine optimisation as the only route to customers.

NEGATIVE

That said, if books go down in price (because of the sheer number of them) readers might change the way we buy books. We may make more impulse buys after following a network of links on the internet, for instance, as readily as we currently invest in a book after a recommendation from a friends. In this case, metadata and SEO may help very much in connecting books to their readers. As the internet evolves – which it will – searches will only become more tailored. (Look only at the evolution of Google search.)

ON MARKETING

AFFIRMATIVE

The volume of published books creates an overwhelming sense of constantly being sold to, which, when combined with the fragmentation of media, makes marketing increasingly difficult. No one likes being sold to. Worse, because of commercial pressure, there may actually be less cultural diversity than meets the eye.

NEGATIVE

No. By narrowing their audience, authors widen their audience.

We live in the time of the hyperniche. All this liking and information spreading has led us to build more paths that are all less taken.

If more books are published, more specialised books can be published, and marketing can be equally specialised. Research which shows consumers are stymied by choice hasn’t focused on books; rather, it has focused on grocery products. Luxury items like books may well be different.

ON BOOK REVIEWS

AFFIRMATIVE

There are fewer ‘official’ review sources these days. Newspapers don’t tend to dedicate the same number of pages to literature. Research has shown that consumers actually buy less when confronted with too much choice.

NEGATIVE

There may be fewer ‘official’ (paid) reviewers about these days, but there are far more blogs. (According to Technorati’s blog directory, there are more book blogs than film & television blogs combined.) Readers leave freewill reviews of books at places like Goodreads and Librarything, and many of those reviews are as insightful and detailed as those from a professional reviewer. Read a number of amateur reviews and you really do get a sense of a book.

ON CHOICE

AFFIRMATIVE

Some choice is good and more choice is better. Adding options is what economists call Pareto efficient: it makes no one worse off (because those who are satisfied with the options that are already available can ignore the new ones), and is bound to make someone (who is not satisfied with existing options) better off. Though this line of argument is normally applied to the world of material goods,it seems even more applicable to culture. People who aren’t turned on by graphic novels can still enjoy it – or benefit from it – when they see it. Those who really hate graphic novels can always stay away from them.

There is a point at which options paralyze rather than liberate consumers. (See The Paradox of Choice.)

ON CULTURal value

NEGATIVE

The proliferation of books enlivens the imagination of all members of a society. Literature enriches our sense of human possibility. It may even empower people to be producers as well as consumers of culture—to find their own, unique mode of self expression (enter NaNoWriMo and similar). A profusion of literature may be the most reliable measure of the health and vibrancy of our culture.

Times change. The truth is, not many people in the world are avid readers. Are efforts misplaced? As a cultural relic for future generations, isn’t a snapshot of today’s internet just as good as anything published in a book?

*

IN THIS DEBATE, ME AGAINST MYSELF, NEGATIVE WINS THE MEAT TRAY.

Now to shout myself a sherry. (I’ve still not ever had a sherry.)

I don’t think there can ever be too many books. I do think there can be too many poorly edited, poorly designed, generally slackarse books. Like any reader, I tend to go through phases – if I read a run of average/poorly chosen books, I start to feel a bit unenthusiastic about reading in general, and if this feeling is common to others (and I think it is), bad books do hurt the industry.

Related Link: Does the world need more books?

Rewriting Your Own Published Work

How do you know when your manuscript is finished?

I’ve never known if it was finished. I’ve only even known that it would probably kill me if I didn’t get it out of the house.

- Camilla Nelson, from the NSW Writers’ Centre Newsletter

One of the few writers to go back and revise her own published work is Louise Erdrich.

For example, she apparently went back and changed some of the recipes in one of her books, presumably after she had complaints from readers who’d tried them out. (Ha. Buy a recipe book suckers… Has anyone here tried  to cook up the witches brew from the Macbeth incantation, out of interest?)

This same thing happened to Nora Ephron, who writes:

I wrote a thinly disguised novel about the end of my marriage, and it contained eceipes. By then, I’d come to realize that no one was ever going to put my recipes into a book, so I’d have to do it myself. I included Lee’s recipes for lima beans and pears (unfortunately I left out the brown sugar and for years people told me they’d tried cooking the recipe and it didn’t work).

- from I Feel Bad About My Neck

Seriously though, I think this is a great idea. For those of us who keep blogs — and I don’t think I’m alone here — we are at a huge advantage over printed and bound authors, because we can go back and update previous blog posts as new information comes to light, or as something brews in our minds, or if we think of a more succinct way of saying the same thing. A blog is a living piece of writing, and designed to be used in this way, incorporating reader comments, updating dead links etc. etc.

EBOOKS COULD BE MORE LIKE BLOGS.

And now, in the age of digital publishing, I see no reason at all why authors can’t go back to previous works and make them better, especially as their own skills develop. I guess there would be authors for whom this is almost blasphemous, who wouldn’t dream of tampering with their old work. There would also be those for whom the temptation to tinker only stymies their current projects, and might provide an unwelcome opportunity to edit forever and ever amen.

Then there’d be those who know of several annoying (or dangerous, or embarrassing) errors in their published works, who would like to put things right before dropping off the face of the Earth, because their writing will be around for ever and ever, for as long as humans are, and why not make things right, if you can?

After all, revised editions need their own ISBNs, so the originals would always be accessible to those with an interest in first editions.

It will be interesting to see if eBooks change this aspect of writing and publishing.

Related Links: Get Me Rewrite? Is the Internet Turning Books into Perpetual Works-in-Progress? from The New Republic; Books That Are Never Done Being Written from The Wall Street Journal.

Did you know these terms?

bastard title: The half title of a book found on the page in front of the title page.

bulky news: improved quality newsprint used for mass market paperbacks.

cineaste: a film or movie enthusiast, or someone who works in the movie industry. (It’s also spelt without the ‘e’ on the end.)

femjep: A story about a female in jeopardy. e.g. various works of Daphne du Maurier.

gorehounds: people who enjoy gory entertainment

high concept: This doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. In fact, it’s an unfortunate phrase because it’s a little counter-intuitive. Nathan Bransford wrote a blog post on this one, so I’m not the only one who didn’t sort of absorb its meaning.

pathography: A biography focussing on the negative elements of a subject, popularised by American writer Joyce Carol Oates. It can also be a study of the effects of illness on a historical person’s life.

steampunk: and to be honest, I still don’t know what ‘punk’ has to do with the genre. When I think punk, I think of a hairstyle from the 80s. The Great Steampunk Timeline. See What Is Steampunk, from Galleycat.

Finding Good Books

There are far too many books around these days.

A friend said this. I know what she meant: There are so many books that it’s become difficult to find one that’s just right for you, at just the right time in your life.

The alternative view:

There are now so many books that there are plenty out there that are just right for you.

But how on earth do we find all these great books?

Do we ask people who work in bookshops?

Will bookshops know their typical buyers (if there is such a thing), and place appropriate titles in easy-to-find places, like in shop fronts and on low tables? Nope. Publishers pay for such perks as a form of advertising. You may find a book-lover working in a book store. That person might give you tailored recommendations, but the main job of booksellers these days is to source books, not recommend them to customers. So, if you’re not a 3 for 2 kind of reader, where’s your next stop?

We can ask friends.

Maybe that’s a better option. But trust some friends’ recommendations and you’ll wonder what the hell they were thinking. (Do your friends know you at all?) Some friends are good at recommending books. Others just aren’t. (I liken it to choosing gifts. Some people recommend their own greatest loves without considering the varying tastes of other people.)

My favourite method: Make use of the internet.

Once you’ve found like-minded readers on GoodReads or on LibraryThing etc. you can keep track of what goes onto their shelves. Since widely-read people accumulate on reading sites in denser proportions than in real life, you’re likely to find your like-minded readers online.

Also, websites make use of ingenious algorithms which automatically put you in touch with people who read like you. A computer can tell you in an instant – out of hundreds of thousands of users – which readers have shelves most like yours. That’s not a survey you’ll ever have time to conduct with your real-life friends.

All that aside, I do think book covers are more important than ever when choosing our next book.

I say this despite the increasing popularity of e-readers, where the look and feel of a book is of secondary concern. (I think e-readers are in a temporary transition phase. For my money: Apple will make use of Kindle’s e-ink technology to create a product that allows e-books to look – and feel – really quite stunning.)

Book covers are more important now than ever precisely because there is so much to choose from. So when Lionel Shriver complains in a Guardian opinion piece, I sympathise with her view:

I write a nasty book. And they want a girly cover on it. Publishing’s notion of what women want is dated and patronising. In my case it’s like trying to stuff a rottweiler in a dress.

After all, without a representative cover, Shriver’s novel is less likely to reach its ideal audience. My introduction to Shriver was ‘The Post-Birthday World’, which I loved. This is the cover.

When I picked up this novel, I had no idea of its author. I thought Lionel Shriver was a man. (Lionel Shriver was born Margaret, who changed her name to Lionel when she was 15.) I remember thinking, ‘Hmm. Cupcake, wedding ring, pastel colour scheme. This is an unusual cover for a book written by a man’. Proof positive: I have been conditioned to expect feminine covers on novels written by female authors.

This isn’t right.

Then I happened to see Lionel Shriver on TV. She spoke to The First Tuesday Book Club. I was impressed with her feistiness, expected a feisty book and brought The Post-Birthday World to the top of my reading pile.

Part way through reading, I was surprised at the content, not because of the author – who, in person, is a great advertisement for her writing – but because of the cover. The Post-Birthday World is a brutally honest and unflinching journey into a woman’s dissatisfaction, neediness and sexuality. I remember flipping back to the cover thinking, ‘This cover is just not right for the book.’ I did like the cover. It’s why I bought the book. I happened to love the novel, but not because I got what I thought I was getting. That was dumb luck. I read the book because of that TV panel discussion in which I got the sense of an unflinching author who doesn’t take crap.

When I’d finished Shriver’s novel I read some reviews on LibraryThing. Turns out I wasn’t the only reader who picked up The Post-Birthday World expecting something else. Many women hated it. They expected to identify with the protagonist. Instead, they hated her, and hated the book. I don’t remember seeing any reviews written by a man.

But Lionel Shriver does not write women’s fiction. She does not write chick-lit. Shriver writes political commentaries with misanthropic, confronting and divisive themes. I see no reason why many men would not get something out of Shriver’s work but I can see no reason why your average bloke would even consider picking up one of her girly-looking books.

But even her women readers were misled. The cover suggests women’s fiction. But in women’s fiction – more so in chick-lit – the protagonist must be likeable – at least likeable enough to engender reader identification. That seems to be a rule of the genre. The readers who left scathing reviews on LibraryThing wanted something else and it’s not fair that they got something different altogether. They wasted their time and money. Meanwhile, Lionel Shriver probably hoped a different sort of reader would pick up her book. But did they?

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On Covers, Marketing and Author Input

Do some readers think, mistakenly, that authors hold sway in the design and marketing of their own books? Here is someone, commenting on Shriver’s Guardian piece:

Publishing companies, eh? I mean, how *dare* they. Their job is really very simple:

1. Recognise your genius as an author.
2. Fix all your grammar and spelling errors, and spot the plot inconsistencies.
3. Do all that manual labour stuff that’s beneath you. Typesetting, printing, sending things to bookshops. Boring!
4. Give you the royalties you are due, say 90% of he cover price, because honestly, who’s doing all the work here, eh?
5. Advance you a large sum for your next book.
6. Organise your appearances at promotional events – not to *sell* your work – puhlease – but rather to engage with your dear, dear readers.

Now *one* of their jobs is also to design the cover. Because, honestly, you are an author, not some ten-a-penny graphic designer. But their job is to design it in accordance with your poor, untrained, badly articulated vision.

You saw a photo you liked? Well for heaven’s sake get those teenagers in the design department to resize it, crop it, fix it for the right print process, figure out how to get the title and your name on it, and FAX ME A PROOF AT MY VILLA. So you can complain witheringly about the way the typeface for the title is *wholly* inappropraite, but you suppose it will just have to do.

Working with these cretins. Darling it’s just *exhausting*.

I wonder if this commenter is representative of readers. Do readers really believe that authors get 90% of cover price as royalties? Do readers really believe that writing a book is such a small part of the overall effort, when in fact a book can take years to plot and years to write? Do readers understand that, often, the author is the last person to be paid, after everyone else in the publishing industry gets their due? Does this commenter realise how many long years it took before Shriver made any living at all from her writing?

When deciding covers, some authors have more say than others, I’m sure. But when books are bought by an acquisitions editor, the book turns into a collaborative project. Sure, an author’s expertise does not often extend to marketing (unles you’re Seth Godin). Authors are not experts in publishing or graphic design. Each of these areas is a speciality in its own right, and it would be a mistake to let authors have too much say.

That said, it’s the author who gets their own name gets slapped on the front.

It’s the author who has to speak at the book tour, sign the flipside of all those ugly covers. It’s the author who must love the thing and promote it, backing it as a child for the ensuing months of full-on promotion.

Surely, surely, if an author says The Cover Does Not Suit My Book, publishers should listen?

Anyway, the argument that ‘Authors are not graphic designers’ works BOTH ways. Graphic designers are not authors. Cover design needs to be a collaborative process. Authors may not know how to fix their own covers. Authors may not have any good suggestions for their own titles, but authors do know when something feels very wrong.

(And kudos to Lionel Shriver, for getting promotional miles out of the very fact that she hates her own cover. Maybe this was all part of the marketing plan, like accidental pre-releases of big-name books.)

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PS

I am halfway through We Need To Talk About Kevin. I’m reading the  HarperCollins PS version. On the back cover, Franklin’s name is spelt ‘Franklyn’. I noticed this when I was only in a few pages. This may indicate that cover designers do not read the books they design covers for. Either way, they don’t read them closely enough. Now that must be pretty annoying for the author!

A Note On Covers

Spot the difference.

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Have you noticed how many vampire books are in stores? What about Twilight inspired book covers? Really, do publishers think readers are that easily manipulated? I wonder what Zoe Heller thinks of the reissue of her book, Notes On A Scandal, which has already been published in a variety of different covers. Here’s one:

Then there’s the movie release edition. For some reason, the book sells better as Fruit On Black.

But Twilight wasn’t the first book to feature Fruit On Black:

Perhaps Twilight was inspired by C.S. Lewis. Now the old classics are coming out in a similar format (Vegetation On Black):

I’m sure you’ve noticed other Twilight (Lewis?) inspired covers. I wonder how many classics will be reprinted with a similar design before the next big design trend.

Does Mineral On Black count?