Choosing a Title for Your eBook: Why Book Titles are Powerful Marketing Tools

In this article, we will be showing you tips for choosing a title for your eBook.

Crafting the perfect title for your new eBook will go a long way to grabbing the attention of your readers and potential audience. Powerful book titles are the number one way to grab new readers.

Choosing a Title for Your eBook: Why Book Titles are Powerful Marketing Tools

Why Book Titles are Powerful Marketing Tools

In short, the title is the first thing your readers see. As the first contact point of information, it’s a critical factor when making instant reactions to your book.

According to Scribe, “The title is the first thing the reader sees or hears about your book–even before the cover in most cases–and getting your title right is possibly the most important single book marketing decision you’ll make (even though most people don’t think about it as marketing).”

So, no pressure, then?

Never fear, we have some top tips to take you through your title generation stage.

Choosing a Title for Your eBook: What Makes A Great Title?

There are some key, essential elements that make a great title.

Book titles should be:

• Memorable
• Easy to say
• Informative

The title should convey what the book is about, give a glimpse of its character, and it should be easy to say and remember.

While that may sound like a tall order, especially if this is your first ebook, you already have lots of great examples sitting on your bookshelves.

Look at what you already know about book titles

A great way to really dig into titles that work is to take some time for critical analysis of book titles that you already own. Take five of your favorite books to start with, and note down exactly how the author and publishing house make the contents sound intriguing with the title.

Look for impactful language, disruptive ideas, phrasing that works, and how book titles lead you into the book itself.

If you are stuck, delve into these resources of the greats:
Amazon’s Best Sellers
Goodread’s Best Titles
Wikipedia’s List Of Best Selling Books

Choosing a Title for Your eBook: Brainstorm Your Own Book Titles

So, having looked at existing books that are successful, brainstorm your own titles to get your grey matter whirring and some fresh ideas on the go.

A great way to approach a brainstorm is to set yourself a timer – 15 minutes is great – and brainstorm as many ideas as you can in that time.

You may find that you need more brainstorming chunks, but getting started is a great way to remove procrastination and to start getting ideas flowing.

When you are brainstorming, consider:

• Exactly how your book is useful
• What pain points does it solve?
• Who is it for?
• Which concepts are used within it?
• Can the reader expect an outcome from this book? If so, what is it?
• What numbers and specifics could add credibility to your title?

Work from what already works

Sometimes, new ideas come from using an existing formula. A great way to spark ideas is to use an already successful title formula and tweak it for your book. Try out variations and see if it sparks some ideas.

Go Random!

Kickstart your ideas even more with some random title generators like this one or this one; see which titles come out of the generator, and tweak some for your own book.

Choosing a Title for Your eBook: Get Some Feedback, Tweak, and Refine

Once your ideas are flowing, make a shortlist of your favorites. The next stage is key to making sure your title works in practice.

Test your book titles

Test with your ideal audience by asking some readers who are in your ideal demographic to feedback on your title options. A great way to do this is with a live stream on Periscope or Facebook Live for real-time interaction, or invite people to fill in a short survey using Typeform or Survey Monkey.

Crucially, make sure you take the feedback results on board! You may need to tweak and refine a few times and repeat the process to get your title nailed, but it will be worth it.

Don’t stop now

Ready to keep working on your eBook? Check out these articles:

21 Helpful eBook Ideas For Online Businesses and Bloggers
Writing Workflow for Your First eBook
How to Sell Your eBook through Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest
6 eBook Cover Design Tips to Make Your eBooks Stand Out in the Crowd
23 Tools and Resources to Create and Sell eBooks