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!”

One of the challenges publishers and authors face with e-books is that no one knows what anyone’s reading. Without eye-catching book jackets displaying the author’s name prominently, the potential for word-of-mouth marketing is virtually lost.

GelaSkins, a company that makes covers for every imaginable mobile device and all the major e-readers, could offer a solution to the branding dilemma of e-books. You can currently buy ready-made GelaSkins for devices, or custom design something unique; the options for design are endless.

An author could create a GelaSkins cover of her latest book and offer it as a giveaway to readers. Or publishers could host a contest, like an iPad draw, and cover the prize with a custom-designed book skin. Authors could also sell skins alongside their books to generate extra revenue. With any of these scenarios, the consumer gets a visual cue as well as protection for their e-reader, and the author and publisher get their names displayed for the world to see.

At about $20 per skin this isn’t exactly an inexpensive option, particularly since e-books still come in below that price. But if e-reading continues to grow like it has, authors and publishers will be looking for creative ways to brand their books. GelaSkins might be a product to do it.

Give us your take: Would you pay $20 for a skin that looks like your favourite book cover?

Image credit: Bookshelf design for Kindle 2 by Colin Thompson

Ed. note: Just found this blog post tucked away in my Drafts folder. It was supposed to have been published in late July. Ooops! But better late than never. The information is still relevant.

When is a book worth more than a book? When it’s a limited edition, of course.

The folks at Taschen America recently published a limited run of 1,969 copies of MoonFire, a book by Norman Mailer commemorating the 1969 moon landing. Each of these copies, accompanied by a signed photograph of Buzz Aldrin, will sell for about $1,000. But even more exclusive are the 12 copies that will come bound with pieces of authentic moon rock; these copies are expected to fetch several hundred thousand dollars each.

Special editions, limited editions, product bundling, author inscriptions, and other enticements are all time-honoured ways for publishers to spur interest–and revenue–for a book.

Two more examples, this time from the world of fiction:

• When historical fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay released Ysabel in 2007, his publishers offered up for auction the first book off the press. First printings of first editions are prized by collectors. The additional sweetener of having the very first completed book off the press and an inscription from the author helped the copy earn a price of more than $550 CDN.
• JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, handwrote and illustrated seven copies of a book of fairy tales. The volumes were bound in leather and decorated with semi-precious stones. Six copies were given away to friends, while the last was auctioned off for charity. The hammer price? About $3.3 million USD.

More than a few people are predicting that, as ebooks rise in popularity, print books will become increasingly prized for their production and collector values. While few authors have the drawing power of JK Rowling — or the ability to garner millions for a single volume — there are plenty of opportunities for self-publishers to create extra value around their books.

Could your book use a soundtrack?

Bruce Pollock, author of By The Time We Got to Woodstock, has compiled an iTunes playlist for each of his chapters about rock ‘n’ roll in 1969. The playlists, posted to his blog, are intended to stir interest in the book.

A book about music is a natural fit for a soundtrack — but what about a business book? Could you match a song to the mood or content of each of your chapters? Or even an entire playlist for each chapter?

The idea reminds me of a piece called the Soundtrack of Success that Fast Company put together in 2004. The magazine asked readers to write in with their favorite work-related song. I thought it was a fun question and submitted my song. Blow me down — it was chosen for the article! Naturally I sent the link around to a few people, driving traffic to the FC website.

Playlists won’t work for everyone but they could be a fast, easy way to add a multimedia element to a print release. At the very least, you and your readers might have a bit of fun. Like Fast Company, you could even encourage readers to contribute their own ideas for your playlist and get a lively conversation going.

What do you think? Leave a comment and let us know.

Yen Cheong over at the Book Publicity Blog recently posted a helpful list of firms and freelancers that do book publicity. Each listing indicates the type of books that firm or person deals in, so you can quickly find the ones who handle non-fiction.

You’ll find that most of the publicists are based in the US, though I did see one firm from Germany and there may be other international firms tucked away on the list.

HarperCollins just announced the release of a “video book” — a 23-minute video that encapsulates the information found in What Would Google Do?, a business book by Jeff Jarvis. The video sells on Amazon for $9.99.

But is the video really a book? What makes a book a book anyway?

In his brilliant examination of the e-book market, past and present, John Siracusa points to a key problem with terminology:

In the print world, the word “book” is used to refer to both the content and the medium. In the digital realm, “e-book” refers to the content only — or rather, that’s the intention.

This is not the case with music, for example, where the medium and the content are separate. The medium changes — vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, MP3 — but music is still music. Music is the product. Music is what you’re buying. The medium is just a vessel, and that vessel changes ruthlessly. When a better, cheaper, faster, or more convenient medium appears, the music follows — with or without the content owners.

But books…there’s a lot of baggage attached to that name. Giant tomes, portable paperbacks, or standard hardcovers, they’re all recognizable as books. In the modern era, there have been no discontinuities of form on par with the those in the music industry to emphasize the separation of content and medium for the written word.

So a “book” is technically the medium — the printed pages bound between covers — but the information (non-fiction) or story (fiction) is the content, the stuff we’re really buying. In which case, to be really clear to the consumer, e-books shouldn’t be called e-books and videos containing information from a book shouldn’t be called video books.

If we look again to the music industry as an example, there are some packaging distinctions that help consumers know what they’re getting. People don’t buy music, they buy songs. Everybody knows that, generally speaking, a song will be 3 or 4 minutes long and follow certain conventions. Group a bunch of songs together and you have an album, also an agreed-upon convention. We’re still not talking about the medium (the CD or MP3 file) but some structure has been wrapped around the content, making it easier for us to understand, buy, and consume the product.

When it comes to information, we have chapters and we have books — one might argue that these are roughly analogous to songs and albums. But the word “book” is still firmly wedded to the medium as well. And so we arrive back where we started with only one word to describe both a collection of content and how that content is conveyed.

If you think that quibbling over word choice is a waste of time, consider the negative comments that have been fired at HarperCollins over the new Jeff Jarvis “v-book”.

The Washington Post describes the content of the video:

The 23-minute video has Jarvis speaking into a single camera with a white background. Instead of reading directly from the book, which was published last month by the company’s Collins Business imprint, Jarvis runs through the basic concepts in the book…

One commenter’s response:

It is impossible to pack the depth, research and resonance of What Would Google Do? (or any other long-form work) into a 23-minute video.

Clearly, he doesn’t consider the video to be the book in visual format, not a v-book. Instead, he considers the video an excellent marketing tool and says HarperCollins would have been smarter to give it away for free rather than charging for it.

So, could HarperCollins have avoided much of the criticism levelled at them if they hadn’t tried to tout the video as a different version of the book? I say yes. Semantics could have made a difference here.

Note: I have to give HarperCollins props for at least trying something new, even if it didn’t quite pan out the way they might have liked. They’re innovating, and no doubt they (and others) will learn with each new step about what works and what doesn’t.

Following my post last week on podcasting for authors, TIME magazine ran an article on the very same topic.

Many authors having a hard time finding a publishing deal are turning to podcasts as a way to build a fanbase for their books. Then, like sci-fi novelist J.C. Hutchins, they’re able to turn that reader support into a comfy contract with a publisher. Or, they’re able to goose sales for a print edition of their own.

Disappointingly, the article only discussed novelists. Have you had success using podcasts to distribute or market your non-fiction title? Click the Comments link to tell us about it.

Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists blogged about a great idea today: book posters. Really groovy, beautifully designed book posters like the ones bands use to promote their gigs.

Yah! Imagine teenagers pinning up glossy posters of their favourite books in bedrooms across the land.  Collectible book posters, framed or mounted, as sophisticated decor in boardrooms. Book posters hanging from the walls as funky conversation pieces in living rooms, restaurants, and art galleries.

Can you envision the marvellous artworks we’d have today if publishers had been creating book posters in the 1920s and ’30s? Promotions for Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway splashed across a canvas more expansive than a dust jacket. If the travel and advertising posters from this era on anything to go on, we’d have some truly outstanding artifacts from publishing’s history.

Heck, for some books they could even have used a larger version of the dust jacket. The first edition jacket for Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night is as beautiful as a travel poster already.

So why aren’t we doing it today? Phenix & Phenix were talking about having e-posters to put on blogs and websites:

I think these posters work very effectively. So much more exciting than a plain email that says, “Hi blogger, my author has a reading at this place on this day…mind posting something about it??” No. Let’s rockstar it up a bit. Give the blogger some bling to post.

But there’s no reason that limited edition prints couldn’t also be made available. If print books are on their way to becoming the collectible version of an e-book, why couldn’t a poster become an additional collectible, in addition to serving a marketing purpose?

What’s your take? How might you use a book or author poster, if you had one? Or if you think a poster wouldn’t work for your book, why not?

According to figures released in 2008, 9% of Americans downloaded an MP3 in the previous 12 months, a figure that had doubled over the previous year. It’s a habit that’s been shaking up the music industry and will certainly affect authors too.

As in the music business, the audio book business is moving away from sales of physical CDs toward selling sound files that can be downloaded to an iPod or other MP3 player. And, just like musicians, authors increasingly find themselves giving away free samples for potential customers to have a listen before they buy the whole volume.

As an author, you can distribute these sound files through your corporate web site, your blog, book sales sites, and social networking sites. There are also a number of podcast directories that can point potential listeners in your direction.

Recording a podcast of a single voice reading a book excerpt is actually a simple process that can be divided into five steps:

1. Adapting your script
2. Assembling hardware and software
3. Recording and editing
4. Converting your recording to an MP3 file
5. Uploading the file to the Internet

1. Adapting your script
Whether you are creating a “free sample” podcast to promote your book, or a full-fledged audio book for commercial sale, there are three basic considerations to keep in mind when you re-write the book as an audio script:

First, are there charts, graphs, or illustrations that you’ll need to write descriptions for and then integrate into the flow of your text? While a see fig 1 notation might work in your printed book, it won’t work on an audio file.

Secondly, what is the best way to divide the flow of your ideas? In printed form, chapters and subheads provide logical places for the reader to pause for reflection or take a break from reading. Audio books, on the other hand, tend to be listened to during the daily commute or session on the elliptical trainer, activities that take about 30 minutes. According to Podcast Free America, the typical spoken word podcast is 3 to 5 minutes long, about the same length as a song. That means your listener should have time to listen to between 6 and 10 “chapters” of your book on the Step-Master each morning.

Thirdly, what sound effects will provide aural interest where illustrations and design added visual interest to your book? Music, audio clips from interview recordings, even sound clips from sound stock libraries can add an extra dimension to your podcast.

2. Assembling the hardware and software
You may need less equipment than you think to create an MP3 file of your book or book excerpt. If your computer has a high-speed Internet connection, a headset with microphone, and software such as Audacity that will let you record sound onto your computer, you already have everything you need to create a basic podcast of your own voice.

3. Recording and editing your podcast
According to Dave Dwyer writing for Busted Halo, using Audacity to record and edit podcasts is much like using a word processing program. His step-by-step instructions for recording using Audacity can be found here. Complete instructions for how to edit your podcast with sound effects and music are available from Guides and Tutorials.com.

4. Converting the file
The audio file you’ve created on your computer will need to be converted to the MP3 format in order to be distributed as a podcast. You’ll need to download a LAME encoder that will work with Audacity to convert your recording to an MP3 file.

5. Uploading the file
If you maintain your own web presence, you or the person who maintains your web site will know how to upload and link to the file from your own website. You can then link to it from your social media profiles, as well as from your blog. If you need some space on a server to host your file, choose a syndication service like the Podcast Directory or LibSyn to take care of your podcast storage and distribution.