Tim Moore

Redefines the experience of reading

I am not a really big fan of devices. I was late to the microwave, late to the VCR, late to the DVD. . .  Gee, I just bought a Blackberry!!! It is not the cost. They don't move me. I eventually get on board, but only when the options are the device or nothing. . . . .

Seth Godin is a remarkable guy, I think. I man with a very nimble mind. Enormously prolific.

Well, now, I have been pontificating in my blog for weeks, pronouncing on what makes a great business book and what doesn't. But I already know what I know, so what is the fun for me in reading my own drivel? So, in the tradition of a book I just published, We Are Smarter Than We, I'd like to know what the wisdom of this crowd has to say.

As you read in my last post, some books are built to fail. That's right, they are built in such a way that failure is the likely outcome. Let's look at the second reason why some books fail.

By now you have read my three or four posts on choosing a title and subtitle for your book, and my encomium to Seth Godin's Purple Cow. Now, let's spend some time in the next few posts looking at some of the reasons books fail: some books, you see, are built to fail.

I have been jabbering away, in my last few posts, about creating a great title for your book, one that is a clarion call for the uniqueness that is your book, your idea.

So, you have labored through two of my posts, and pontifical musings, on what makes a good title. So, how can you road-test your title ideas to come up with the best that you can?

So, how can you create a great title for your book?

Over the years, we’ve watched the business bestseller charts and observed some clear formulas behind good titles. Understanding these can help you to create the best title for your book, and so here’s a selection, together with a few questions to help stimulate your thinking.

Well, just about everything. Choosing a title for your book may be the most important thing that you and your publisher do during the process of developing your ms and your marketing plan.

Consumer-oriented book publishing is suffering from a very bad disease, the disease of no growth--at least in the United States. In the most robust, sustained economy since the 1950's, consumer publishing posted a 5% decline in the first 6 months of 2007, as reported by Publisher' Weekly.

I don’t know about you, but I am tired of listening to and reading people who scream their opinions at us. It seems to be a modern phenomenon that is hard to avoid. And publishers aren’t immune to it either. Just look at the political books that have come out over the last 5-8 years, many of them from screamers.