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Thursday, August 25, 2011

Setting a Title on Daemon (working title)

25 August 2011, Setting a Title on Daemon (working title)

Okay, now that I've finished the first draft of Daemon (working title), I need to find a title for it.  The following is information I've given about setting a title:

Unless you get a bolt from the blue while you are writing your novel, a title is best affixed when you finish the first draft.  Sometimes it takes a long while to match the right title to a book, and sometimes the marketing savvy of your editor/publisher helps fix the title.  Here are some ideas on how not to put together a bad title.  Once you have a potential title or titles in mind:

Check it on Amazon, B&N, or any other book seller site.  You want your title to be nearly or absolutely unique.  This means no one else has used it in common practice or knowledge.  If you have a great title, but everyone and his brother is using it already, how will you separate yourself from the crowd?  Just take a look at some common titles on Amazon and see how many hits they generate--sometimes thousands.  If your title gets confused with a thousand other titles, no one will find your book.  On the other hand, if your book has a strange title, you might get no hits at all.

Make sure your title reflects your work.  Roz Young recommended my book Aegypt be called, In the Tomb of the Goddess of Darkness and Light.  That's catchy, but too long.  There are some other works with Aegypt in the title and another work named Aegypt.  Just one.  I felt that that was great probability.  Someone looking for Aegypt (either novel) would find mine.  This is a positive.

Don't hold on to your working title if it doesn't work.  For example, I gave a working title of Seeds for The Seeds of Rebellion to the work The End of Honor.  The working title of The Fox's Honor was Duel.  The title of A Season of Honor was Desert.  These titles simply stood in place for the final titles.  Eventually, the Honor theme became the focus of each of the titles, and finally, I gave the series the title The Chronicles of the Dragon and the Fox.  This was a request from my publisher and made sense from the context of the books.

So to recap, make sure you have a somewhat unique title, that can't be confused with too many works.  Check it out before you go to print.

So, taking my own advice, I checked the title Daemon using the Internet and found that by itself, Daemon isn't the worst or the best title.  I also determined that Daemon doesn't really fit the work that well.  What to do?  I decided to start with the form of the titles of my other non-related works.  I've been writing some fun works that all have a major character or main character who is a woman.  Those works, I've named for the major/main character for example: Hestia: Enchantment of the Hearth and  Dana-ana: Enchantment of the Maiden.  Because of this, I'm naming this novel, for now, Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon.

This title checks out, but it may not meet the test of time or a publisher.  Likely, a publisher will want a simpler title.  If my regular publisher or the same publisher wants to publish all my unrelated novels, they might like the set of titles for the works.  This is just an idea, but the most important point of publishing and your publisher is to sell your books.  The title is a critical part of the work and marketing the work.

Tomorrow, the marketing materials and setting up the work.

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