(14 votes, average: 4.79 out of 5)
Loading...This now is the third of my series of FIVE FAVORITES from blog posts in previous years; this one is taken from 2014.
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How do trade books — written for a general audience — get their titles? There’s not an easy answer to that. Most scholarly books are simply given a title by the author; the publisher has to agree, of course, and they have the last word. They are unlikely to accept anything “cute”: for scholarly books they want the titles to sound erudite and learned. If they are meant to be “clever” then they are to be clever only to those on the academic inside who catch the allusions.
Trade books are meant to be witty and intriguing for a general reader, and a sign that the book will be really interesting and about something that the reader wants to learn more about. In the best cases, the reader – a non-scholar – should read the title and think, “Huh, I’d like to know about that!” or “Huh, I wonder that that’s about?” The trick is to be able to grab a reader’s attention without being overly sensationalized, and that’s a very fine line indeed.
It’s hard to know whether a title will accomplish its task or not. I thought my last book “How Jesus Became God” would be a real grabber. But I’m not sure it was. The best titles for my books have always come – unlike that one – not from me but from my publisher. My two favorites, I think, are Lost Christianities: The Battles For Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (published with Oxford as one of my first trade books; an editor came up with the title) (it actually was an editor with a different press who proposed the idea of the book to me and gave it a title, before I decided to publish it instead with Oxford) and Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (my first book with Harper, since Oxford at the time wasn’t sure they wanted it). There’s a funny story about that title &that I’ll tell at the end of this post.
To read the rest of this post you will need to belong to the blog. Hey, don’t you have a longing for belonging? There’s a small membership fee, every bit of it goes to charity, and you get five posts a week, each and every week, going back to 2012. So what’s the downside?
I love this “five posts” idea and look forward to reading the final two posts in this series. If I had had a vote, I would have voted for the title of “Lost in Transmission.” That would have been a really “cool” title.
Quote – “Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why”
It has a click bait ring to it. Three unproven statements here –
1 – the bible is changed (!)
2 – I know WHO change it
3 – I know WHY it’s changed.
Someone is lying – it boils down to either
1 – the bible
2 – this author.
So yeah, a good title to sell a book. But more clever than persuasive for knowledgeable readers.
I’m not sure how you’re defining “lie.” One standard explanation is that a lie is a contradiction between what a person thinks is true and what he/she claims is true. (That ultimately goes back to Augustine, who wrote two treatises on the matter). In either event, I don’t think there is any lying involved on anyone’s part. I think if you would read the book you’d have a better idea what is in it.
That’s hilarious! I’ve always hoped one day to stumble across an academic publication with a title like “Important Stuff Before the Colon: Unnecessary Expository Stuff After the Colon.”
The cynic in me wants to say that this is how *popular* books get their title. *Impopular* books are when they go with the author’s suggestions.
I’m surprised ‘Misquoting Jesus’ didn’t sell well in England (where I live). I, for one, bought it and it’s one of my top ten all time favourite books (and I’ve read thousands over my life). It’s a great title too, but I agree that it probably doesn’t quite describe the ‘product’ as accurately as it could. I have only one published book and the title just came to me, as if by magic, and I am quite proud of it. I have written several other (as yet unpublished) stories and have struggled to think of titles for them. However, one did seem to have an obvious title, but when I checked, somebody else had beaten me to it.
WEll, a couple of things. The main one is that Brits as a rule just ain’t interested. (I have a large family over there! And am there a good deal). The other is, well the title. The called it Whose Word Is It. Yikes.
That’s a shame then, as my fellow Brits seem to have bought religious themed books such as The Da Vinci Code, Holy Blood, Holy Grail etc in their thousands, whereas they would actually have learned some real facts from yours.
Hey, who wants history when you can have Dan Brown???