7 Ways to Find Your Best-Selling Title

If you look on the best seller lists, one of the things the books have in common is an irresistible title. Last week we talked about the five characteristics of a best-selling title. Now let's look at how you can find one for your book.

Coming up with an irresistible title for your book is no small task. Yet it's one of the most important. Your title can make or break your book. It's what invites readers (and publishers) to take a closer look. It's part of what fosters "buzz" and excited word of mouth.

A title is comparable to a headline in an advertisement. Great copywriters often spend the most time coming up with the headline. One of the most important tools in a copywriter's tool kit is a "swipe file"—samples of successful promotions the copywriter can use to spark good ideas of his or her own.

I suggest that, as an author, you create a similar "swipe file" for title ideas.

Where can you go to get good ideas for titles you can adapt? Here are 7 suggestions.

7 Places to Find Title Ideas

1. Search engines. Try the following searches in Google and Yahoo:

• "best-selling titles""
• best seller lists"
• "best book titles"
• "how to name a book"

2. Look to amazon.com. Click on "top sellers" in Books and peruse the list. Notice if there are any patterns (e.g., are memoirs big these days?).

3. Clickbank.com. This is like the amazon for ebooks, software, and other digital products. Click on "Buy Products" and look at the category that best fits your book or information product idea. Note which titles are top-selling.

4. Ebay. Key in whether you're looking for fiction or nonfiction. You might further sort with keyword "best selling." Don’t limit it to books that are just like yours, however. You may find inspiration for your cookbook title among the garden books, or vice versa.

5. Public domain works. Search "public domain" or just go to www.gutenberg.org. Many of these titles are "classics." Again, search the top-selling downloads to see what you can learn.

6. Do a keyword search. There are different programs and tools, but a good place to start is www.goodkeywords.com. They offer a free tool and a short primer on keywords. Google also offers a free tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal/. See which keywords are most searched on your topic. Then, try to include these words or phrases in your title or subtitle.

 7. Ezine directories. Look at the most-read articles on your topic. Chances are, the title is what drew people in. If you are submitting articles to free ezine sites—and I hope you are—go back and look at which articles were the most read. (Articles sites such as www.ezinearticles.com and others give you those statistics.) You can use these winning titles to create the title and main focus of your book.

Next steps ...

If you want more help on choosing your best-selling title, here's how to learn more: