Looking for a name for your book? This is one of the choices that you have to take into account more because the name you give your book will be, along with the cover, the main hook that will make a reader buy it or not. So it’s worth spending a little time choosing this name and, depending on the target audience you want to target, choose one type of title or another. Below, we give you some tips on how to name a book with the trends that exist and the most appropriate for your work genre.
How to name a book?
There are different ways of thinking about a title for your work, the choice of the most appropriate depends on you. Above all, on the audience, you are addressing. For example, if you write with poetic prose, you will have to choose suggestive titles that show your way of writing. On the other hand, if you write a detective novel, you must create a more direct and mysterious title without the metaphor or symbolism is very important.
Types of titles exist
A title that is like a summary or presentation of the work you are going to read. In this sense, we could find universal books such as The Crime of Lord Arthur Saville by Oscar Wilde or The Ingenious Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Cervantes. Both titles tell us what the work is about and what theme we are going to find inside (mystery, adventure, an English environment, a Spanish environment, etc.)
The evocative titles give us a glimpse of what is novel but which, however, do not give us explicit information about it. They are titles that suggest more than inform and designed to arouse the interest of the reader and achieve the book’s acquisition. In this sense, we find titles such as Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco, The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire, or The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann.
And then there are those other types of book names that do not explain anything about the novel to us and, nevertheless, they do arouse curiosity and intrigue us. They are books like, for example, Orwell’s 1984 that without giving hardly any information, that choice impacts us and makes us wonder about what the argument will be about.
Choose expressive titles
One of the formulas that have been working the most in recent years when choosing a book’s name is opting for powerful, metaphorical, and poetic titles. They are verbal constructions that generate a very strong aesthetic image and conquer us with just the title. It is the example of The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz or The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.
They are titles that impact their formulation and awaken sensitivity and an attraction as strong as a magnet that is why it is a good option to think of this type of name for your book. However, this type of title does not work with all genres but is indicated for novels of love, reflection, or poetry.
Follow the long sentences
For novels with overtones of suspense, police, or mystery, the titles that best fit and that the authors are using the most lately are long sentences that tell something about the work and leave the imagination open so that the reader wants to know about what about. Traditionally, the titles of the works are short and condensed. Still, in recent times a long and surprising title is being cultivated that attracts attention, such as, for example, The grandfather who jumped out the window and took off from Jonas Jonasson or The girl who he dreamed of a match and a can of Stieg Larsson gasoline.
For crime stories
This type of name generates interest in the reader, it raises doubts about the theme of the work and invites them to buy. If it is a crime novel, you can also add words that enter into this environment, such as, for example, The Spy Who Came from the Cold by John le Carré or Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.
Find out the summary topic
A good way to choose the title of your work can also be found inside it. Many authors prefer that their book be titled either with one of the protagonists, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary for example or with phrases that some of the characters say throughout the work. It may also be that a feeling is extracted from the text, a word, an image, and so on.
So if you haven’t just been inspired when it comes to naming it, we recommend that you reread your writing and look for that idea, phrase or word that can work with the title.
