Every part of a book is important. But one of the most important parts is the title. What’s in a title? You want the title to be engaging, original, but not overly complex.
Is it a series?
How do you want those titles to blend together?
Does the title match the book itself?
These are all important questions to ask, and here is why. If it is a series, you want the titles to be individualized but match at the same time. Especially if you write multiple series. I love when I come across an author with multiple series, and I can tell by the title which books belong together.
A title should also match the book itself. This lends to the overall experience of the reader. If the title gives the reader an expectation of what is to come in the book, then that is a conscious decision to be made. I have read a couple of books recently where the title gave me expectations of a kink, or subject matter that didn’t show up in the book at all and I was let down. While those books were enjoyable, I was left wanting more from the story based on what I was promised with the title.
Naming a book is stressful, but there are ways to talk through the process… and sometimes naming the series as a whole along with the individual titles prior to completing the series is the way to go. Choosing a title sometimes becomes an issue when multiple titles weren’t thought through when that first title went to print, and that makes the subsequence titling complicated. For example, I work with an author who wrote a book, chose the title, went through the entire editing process, and then released. This book was never intended to be a series, so when she had overwhelming requests for more books from the characters introduced in this series, she has struggled a little bit to pick titles that work with the book and the series as a whole. This has lead to brainstorming sessions of throwing out words and phrases until we got to the one that clicked.
Book names are one of the first things the readers see… you want to make sure that title pulls the reader in to one click.