Post by K'Sennia Visitor on May 15, 2019 5:12:05 GMT
Some peeps choose their title before they begin their story, usually because they like to get their cover created first to use as inspiration, or to make sure it will be ready by their self-imposed publishing deadline.
Other people wait until the book is finished because titles are hard, and maybe they like to choose a title which has significance to the story, or that fits into the theme, or is maybe a phrase from the actual book, and they won't know what that perfect title is until their book is complete.
Whenever you choose a title, the first thing you should do next is to google it to see if it has already been used by someone else. If it has been been used, is it in the same genre, or a different one? How similar is this other book to your own? How long ago was it published? How popular is it? All of these questions can be used to decide if it's worth keeping the title for your book or if you should change it.
The biggest thing is you don't want readers being confused and one-clicking your book by mistake. Also, in this extremely litigious society we live in, if that other author is at all successful there is a good chance they may sue you for using their book title, even though book title cannot be copyrighted. They can be trademarked, and so that is probably another thing you might want to check is to see if any words or phrases in your title have been trademarked.
You can do a trademark search here ->
tmsearch.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4805:yn0ir3.1.1
Other things to consider when choosing a title are:
Will readers understand what it means?
Does it clearly signal what the book is about?
Does it interest or entice the reader?
Is it easy to remember and spell?
Does the font you wrote it in on the cover clearly signal genre?
Is it readable in thumbnail?
You may also choose a series title if you're writing a series, or a subtitle, usually a short tagline with a few important keywords in it. Series titles and subtitles are great for adding keywords which help a little bit with visibility, but nowhere near as much as it did before the amazon ads program began.
You may not want to get ridiculous with the keywords. I use them with my erotica books and so far I haven't been told to delete them, but that could always change. I like to use the subtitle to clearly point out the kinks used in the book, since that is important to helping the reader know if they want to read you or not. But keyword use is definitely something that could get you in trouble with amazon if they decide you have too many or if they ever decide to forbid their use at all. So be careful and only choose ones which are the most relevant and helpful to the reader. And try to create or purchase a cover that signals the genre and subgenre so clearly that you don't even need keywords to let readers know your book is for them!