Titles

One of the first issues I came across when I started writing stories was finding titles for my books. Many questions flashed through my mind, creating chaos and resulting in me almost hitting my head against my desk, cause heck it is actually more difficult than it appears at first glance.

A title is so much more than a name for a book. It is its identity.

The first thing readers will see apart from the cover is the title. If they are to remember a book, they would do so using the title.

Around it, they build their image of the book's story. The more they read, the more meaning it gives to this particular title and for a reason. Because stories arouse emotions in readers, as well as writers, of course. And those emotions will be attached to the book, which is defined by its title.

Thus, we could say that titles have power.

On the marketing side of things, especially on Webnovel, titles are THE bait, which I have a serious problem with sometimes but can only agree on.

Let me explain in a bit more detail what I mean.

Searching for a new book to read can be a tedious task. Something that would be easier if Webnovel allowed for more tags to be incorporated in the search bar.

Once you've entered the tags or whatever info and pressed Enter, you're faced with a very long list of books. That's why I find myself using the power stone, trending and golden ticket ranking lists more often than the search bar.

Upon scrolling down those lists, people would look at the cover and title of each book, which would leave them with a first impression of the story. That's why titles are baits, clickbaits to be more precise.

Covers are important for sure. They need to be catchy to pique curiosity, but they can be changed. Under contract, titles cannot.

For marketing purposes, web novel titles need to be picked carefully by taking a few things like the plot, the goals of the main character (or main characters), the general tone of the book, etc. But most importantly, they should be kept simple.

However, I like it when they are also original and… don't contain some kind of weird elements like the followings:

- Strongest something in the something verse

- My runting system.

- Reincarnated with the biggest stick.

- I can talk to this beautiful elf whose beauty can topple countries and floor cities while keeping herself dry.

- Super trashing giga strongest earth-shattering grandpa cultivator with an OP system and a divine morning star.

At first, I really facepalmed myself at the sight of such… lack of style, until I found out it is a style of its own, some sort of code, a tacit understanding between the readers and authors.

It actually is some sort of short synopsis. A tiny taste of what the book really is about. Since a lot of people seem to like MCs Reincarnated with the biggest stick... the clickbait is real.

Although such titles don't guarantee a good story, they are very efficient at attracting Biggest Sticks fans.

Read you guys later

Y.R.

*****

Anecdote:

One of my current ongoing books, "Return of the Woodcutter," used to be called differently.

Would you believe me if at first it was called "Fart to open a status window?" I'm not even kidding.

Why did it have such a title? Well, the answer is quite simple. The protagonist had to fart to open his status window. Something much, much more different from the current version.

Now, how did I come up with this? It's because I thought, at the time, it was a unique quirk to the novel. Thinking it was funny, I left it as is, until I actually threw the story away and rewrote a new one after a much need reflection.