Coming up with a great title isn’t easy, but it may be the single most important thing you do for your book. Both the title and subtitle can have a major influence on your book’s success. A great title alone won’t sell your book, but a poor title can make sure it doesn’t sell.

Too many first-time authors try cramming a 25-word synopsis of their book into the title. They end up with titles that are insufferably long, hard to understand, and impossible to remember. Yawn.

For the main title, you want something memorable and easy to say. Titles are usually very short—sometimes just one or two catchy words. The subtitle then picks up the job of describing what the book is about in a bit more detail. The title piques interest, the subtitle explains.

Consider these partnered titles and subtitles:

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Cost of Everything
Death By Meeting: A Leadership Fable About Surviving The Most Painful Problem in Business
Small Giants: Companies that Choose to Be Great Instead of Big

Brainstorm a list of keywords related to the content of your book and its intended readership. What is the main benefit someone will get from reading your book? Use these keywords in your title and subtitle to help draw the right people to your work.

Read through your preface, introduction, and cover copy. Sometimes you’ll find a choice concept or turn of phrase that can be pulled out and turned into a catchy title.

Once you’ve come up with keywords and done some brainstorming, narrow your list to one or two contenders and try them out on others. Your best test audience is made up of people who fall into your intended readership. Poll some clients if they’re the ones you want buying your book, or talk to colleagues in your industry if you wrote the book for them.

Avoid getting too attached to a title before the feedback comes in. And if you find yourself stuck without a title after all of this, get help. With so much resting on what goes on the front cover, it’s definitely worth the investment.

UPDATE – July 13, 2010 - Well, it’s happened already. Sony just broke the $100 e-reader barrier. Looks like there will be e-readers for everyone this holiday season! – R.S.

May 1st was a big day for the e-reader market. That’s when the Kobo, at $149, became the cheapest and most stripped down e-reader you could buy. Soon after, Borders started selling a competitive but cheaper reader, the Aluratek Libre for only $119.99. Now Barnes & Noble has a version of the Nook at $149, and Amazon Kindle promptly slashed its price to $189. Sony, not to be left out of the fun, has also dropped their prices. What’s really going on here? Is it simply competitive pricing, or something more?

Let’s look to the printer and toner pricing structure for a possible answer. Each day, printers are sold with more features, and at lower prices. The catch is the toner: It continues to be ridiculously expensive. I break out in hives when I have to buy toner cartridges for my colour printer. I even purchased a new printer once because it was cheaper than buying the toner! Don’t worry, I found the old one a new home at a recycling charity. Seems e-books are the new toner, and e-readers the new printers.

The first e-readers were expensive ($359 for the first Kindle), and e-books were cheap (typically about $9.99 per book). The publishers didn’t like it, but they had to live within a model where the retailer set the price. When Apple’s iPad launched this spring they forced a change that swept the industry, and now retailers have less discount wiggle room. Not surprisingly, e-books prices have shot up to the $12 range today.

The only lever left to support the rapid rise of digital book sales (and save the publishing industry) is for e-reader prices to continue to drop. Cheaper means much more accessible, and the number of people who own an e-reader will explode. Back to my printer and toner analogy, almost anyone can buy a colour printer these days, but the toner is a whole other story. We need to keep an eye on e-book pricing, and take bets on which e-readers will survive the price wars (the iRex has already filed for bankruptcy protection in the USA), and which ones will go down with last year’s colour printer models.

As Bette Davis/Margo Channing said in the movie, All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night!”