Why We Changed Our Book’s Title

And what you should think about with yours

Photo by Elisa Calvet B. on Unsplash

This week’s newsletter is for paid subscribers—a small but mighty group whom I am eternally grateful for. I didn’t set out on Substack to grow a paid newsletter, but all of these folks’ confidence in me has inspired me to dig deeper and devote even more time to making Notes From the Editor more valuable for everyone. I’m going to be writing one paid newsletter per month to honor that commitment, and today’s the day this month!

So, here again we have the drinks & apps version of Notes From the Editor for free subscribers:

• Lately on Hungry Authors

• Tips & Tidbits: fun/informative/helpful things I’ve found for you

Click below to become a paid subscriber and stick around today for the main course: a discussion on book titles that I’ve never had on Notes From the Editor—ever before.

---

Lately on Hungry Authors

We’ve had SO many great conversations with guests on the podcast! Check out:

• “Where to Start with Book Publicity with Leah Paulos”

• “Approaching Platform with Curiosity and Joy with Ann Kroeker”

• “The Etiquette of Being a Writer with Courtney Maum”

• “How Audiobooks Are Made with Julia Whelan”

• “Hungry Authors Need Hungry Agents with Morgan Strehlow”

  ---

Tips & Tidbits

New Tools for Finding Comp Books & Agents!

Publishers Marketplace—the gift that keeps on giving! This week, they announced two new tools available for members that will help you zero in on forthcoming books and agents.

• Deal Matcher: Type in a word, phrase, or sentence that describes your book, and it’ll show you all of the books similar to that idea in the PM database! Perfect for finding comps.

• Agent Matcher: Similarly, share your book idea and then select criteria like identity, experience level, and availability to get a list of agents who are signing books like yours. 

Indulge in the Kate Middleton Conspiracies

Fun fact I don’t talk about much: I am a HUGE Anglophile. And I’ve always been Team William & Kate (although I’ve come around a bit on Harry & Meghan since reading Spare). So I’ve been following all of the #WhereisKateMiddleton drama with unabashed interest. I hate to make light of something that is potentially incredibly serious, but to be totally honest, this has been my guilty pleasure outlet in the midst of a stressful writing project! My favorite deep dive so far has been the Popcast’s newest episode. Listen and enjoy!

Ryan Holiday & Cal Newport on the Life of an Author

Cal Newport is doing his press tour for his new book, Slow Productivity, so I’ve listened to him on a few of my favorite pods. In his two-part episode with Ryan Holiday, they actually spent a lot of time talking about what it’s like to be on deadline with a major publisher and how they think about their lives as full-time authors. If you dream of that life one day, this conversation is illuminating! Listen to Part 1 and Part 2.

A Publishing Postmortem

Sometimes when books publish, they don’t meet the publisher’s expectations—even for New York Times bestselling authors. In this very honest and vulnerable episode, Mike Michalowicz (author of mega bestseller Profit First) talks about the moment his publisher told him his new books weren’t selling enough copies and what he’s going to do next. It’s been making me think about how we avoid the same thing happening to Hungry Authors!

Thank you!

So many of you have told me you’ve already preordered Hungry Authors! You are incredible. It means so much to us. Don’t forget to hang onto your preorder receipt so we can send you some bonuses, which will be announced in April!

And now, without further ado…

---

Why We Changed Our Book’s Title

Friends, a few weeks ago when I wrote this post about the new forthcoming writing books publishing this year, I spent a lot of time googling and searching on Bookshop.org, Amazon, and Publishers Marketplace for those writing books. I found so many interesting-looking books that I recommended to you all. But you know what I didn’t find?

My own book.

I mean, I know that my book is a writing book publishing this year, and that it should be included in the list… but if I were anyone else just looking for “writing book” as my search term, Hungry Authors wouldn’t pop up.

And that scared me.

I realized… holy cow, the title of our book doesn’t have “writing” anywhere in it! Of course a potential reader searching for “writing” books wasn’t going to find it.

And that is bad. Because if potential readers can’t find your book, they’re not going to buy your book.

But I didn’t know what to do about it. Our title had already been finalized. We had a cover. We’d already announced it. We’d already been sharing it with friends and family. We already had preorders! 

Could anything be done? 

I hemmed and hawed for a week, and finally I decided to talk to Liz. (I should’ve told her sooner, but I’m going to blame this one on Enneagram 9 indecision and worry leading to stuckness.) 

Liz’s reaction: “UMM… That is a problem and we need to fix it now!”

Within minutes, she had fired off an email to our editor, agent, and team at the publisher asking/telling them that we needed to make a change to the subtitle. (Side note: Having a coauthor is awesome!!)

The previous title was:Hungry Authors: The Indispensable Guide to Planning, Creating, and Publishing a Nonfiction Book.

We proposed: Hungry Authors: The Indispensable Guide to Planning, Writing, and Publishing a Nonfiction Book.

Even though it makes way more sense and seems so obvious that I can’t believe NO ONE suggested this change earlier, trying to change it now felt like a risky move to us (at least to me), for several reasons:

1. Because the title had already been finalized and blasted out to the world.

2. Because we had already fought for a different subtitle altogether, and lost. Now we were coming back for more?

3. When you’re working with a traditional publisher, the author doesn’t get final say. The publisher does. What if they said no for the aforementioned reasons?

Thankfully, our editor saw the merit of this change and recognized the necessity of our book attracting the right readers (after all, they want to sell books, too!). The title is now officially changed. The cover is revised. We’re marking up the change in our proofs.

Phew. Crisis averted.

But the whole near-fiasco has had me thinking about how titles come to be and all of the different forces at play behind the scenes, especially when you’re working with a publisher. And I realized, this is a conversation I’ve never had with all of you here. 

Choosing the right title for your book is a careful, tricky process that must be guided by equal parts creativity and marketing. You must hold those two forces in balance while titling your book. Let either of them take over, and you run the risk of alienating readers and condemning your book to the bowels of Amazon, ne’er to be found. *Shudder*

Today we’re going to talk about:

• Why titles matter

• The danger of letting marketing & SEO dictate titles

• Also the danger of letting creativity dictate titles

• How readers actually decide what books to buy

• The Al Dente title + why subtitles are where it’s at

• Claire’s questions about titles answered! (+ a titling fail on my part)

(Keep in mind—what I’m about to share is specifically for prescriptive nonfiction titles. Creative nonfiction and fiction titles are a world unto themselves.)

So let’s dig in.