For my friends who are writers: Don’t let publishers push you into titles for your books that you dislike.
I let this happen to me twice. I felt that I did not have the leverage to resist them, and perhaps I didn’t. But I do wish that I had pushed even harder than I did.
The first time I made this mistake was in 2005 and my book on discernment. I didn’t have a sexy title for it, and the publisher insisted on the title, What God Wants for Your Life. The problem with it was that the title suggested the very ideas that I was attempting to counter.
I don’t think that I-Questions are primarily about discerning God’s will for me. It isn’t about what God wants me to do or about how I can do the will of God. Discernment is primarily about God-Questions: Where is God at work? What does God care about? I also don’t believe that discernment is a matter of guessing what is the one thing that God has “up his sleeve.” Instead, I argued that we have real choices to make; that discerning the will of God is a conversation with creative possibilities; and that discerning a way forward is not just about “me”, but about “us” – the church, the body of Christ.
The second time I caved to a publisher over a title was in 2013, with a book that explored both how we think about suffering and how we talk with one another when suffering dogs the lives of our friends and loved ones. I wrote the book during my brother’s last year of battling brain cancer and – based on our conversations – I wanted to prompt people to think honestly about suffering; acknowledge its reality; avoid saying stupid, hurtful things to one another; and cultivate real hope in hard times.
The book was organized around ten questions the reader could ask themselves and ended with a personal postscript. I called the 10 questions, The Dave Test. But I knew that no one would intuitively understand what that book was about with a title like that. So, I proposed the title, When Life Sucks.
My publisher was church-affiliated, and they nearly lost it. They couldn’t possibly use language like that. I pointed out that the very first chapter was entitled, “Can you say life sucks?” They were grudgingly willing to let that stand but they insisted that they couldn’t use the title. I even suggested they use my title and sell the book in a paper bag. (It probably would have worked.) But they insisted. The book’s published title is The Dave Test, and that, of course, has obscured the purpose of the book ever since.
My second “don’t do this” recommendation arises out of my experience with the same two books. Don’t let publishers convince you that subtitles can do what their lousy titles won’t.
The truth is that – not since the 19th century, have subtitles served the role of defining what a book was all about. Technically, yes, a title hooks the reader, and theoretically a subtitle defines what the book is all about.
But the fact of the matter is that the subtitle of most books is as easily forgotten. They are – as Mary Laura Phillpot puts it – as memorable as most people’s middle names. As she notes:
The ubiquitous Eat, Pray, Love was actually Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia, although I bet no one ever called it that. (When you were in eighth grade and your mom asked you what you were doing your book report on for school, did you say, “Why, I’m reading Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus”?) Once a book becomes popular, the subtitle typically disappears from our consciousness.
So, fight the good fight. Do what you can to control the title of your book. It may be your only chance to reach your readers.
Heaven knows, the publisher isn’t going to do that.
Photo by Gülfer ERGİN on Unsplash
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