A Title to Intrigue

By Rel Mollet

Authors and publishers spend a lot of time and money creating a cover to fit a story, with the hope it will hold visual appeal for readers and entice them to buy. There's always significant airplay given to covers people love and loathe in online discussion boards and on blogs.

I wonder if as much time and effort is invested in choosing the right title. I believe a clever, intriguing, and genre appropriate title can have just as much importance in catching a reader's eye.

Here are some recent titles that have appealed to me...

A Fool and His Monet and Another Day, Another Dali by Sandra Orchard

Dust and Obey, While You Were Sweeping, and Thrill Squeaker are all titles in Christy Barritt's Squeaky Clean Mysteries.

Dear Mr. Knightley and The Bronte Plot by Katherine Reay

Annabel Lee by Mike Nappa

The Bachelor Girl's Guide to Murder by Rachel McMillan

Curio by Evangeline Denmark

Obviously, I like a good play on words in a title, as shown by Sandra and Christy's titles. Titles that hint at a different take on a story I'm already familiar with intrigue me, which is why Katherine and Mike's are listed (and yes, Mike's refers to a poem rather than a classic novel!).

Rachel's grabs my interest immediately, firstly with the unusual reference to a "bachelor girl" and then linking it to murder. The title alone tells me a unique story is waiting for me...and it was!

Evangeline's simple use of an old fashioned word, along with its meaning, made me curious, of course!

There are plenty more examples and there's no need for me to go into bad titles as I'm sure you are all well aware of those.

I'd love you to share some book titles that caught your eye recently, and why they particularly appealed.

What's In a Title?

For the last couple of months my publishing team and I have been talking titles. Primarily the title for my debut novel that will be released in April since it needed to be locked in this month to enable it to start the production process. (Side note: yes, you heard me right, ten months out from release is when the process of producing the book kicks off!)

I had given it a title but I've been writing long enough to know that publishers frequently change titles, so I did my best to hold it pretty lightly. My publishing contract means that while I get consulted on the title, I don't have veto powers, ultimately it's my publisher's decision.

Over the last few weeks we have churned through a range of possibilities from the potential through to the crazy (it featured glow worms and no, there are no glow worms in the book!). We played with the seasons the story is set in, the locations, and the themes. We wanted something that was romantic but not sappy, contemporary but not complicated. We worked through titles of other recently released and soon-to-be released titles of other contemporary romances to try and avoid anything too similar.

Which got me think about titles in general. What I love (whimsical, easy to remember, identifies the genre) and what I don't (tells you nothing about the genre, too complicated, super sappy). So let's talk. What are your favourite book titles ever? And what kind of title would make you not even interested in reading the back cover?

Kara Isaac lives in Wellington, New Zealand. Her debut romantic comedy, Close To You, is about a disillusioned academic-turned-tour-guide and an entrepreneur who knows nothing about Tolkien who fall in love on a Tolkien themed tour of New Zealand. It will be an April 2016 release from Howard Books. When she's not working her day job as a public servant, chasing around a ninja preschooler and his feisty toddler sister, she spends her time writing horribly bad first drafts and wishing you could get Double Stuf Oreos in New Zealand. She loves to connnect on Facebook at Kara Isaac - Writer and Twitter @KaraIsaac