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How to subtitle your book so people will read it: Tajja Isen on balancing the demands of marketing with artistic vision
https://lithub.com/the-art-of-the-mini-sales-pitch-how-to-subtitle-your-book-so-people-will-read-it/
I've thought the "meta" of subtitles has been pretty ridiculous for a while. It seems like the actual title of most works these days is irrelevant, and the subtitle actually tells you what the piece is about. It seems like with the trajectory we're on, eventually we could just cut titles entirely.
But this article is a very interesting perspective, the subtitle as an elevator pitch. I hadn't thought about it that way before but it really rings true. I wonder if, as the salesmanship of the title/subtitle continues to increase over time, if English language works well eventually get to the level of the overly long Japanese book that have small paragraphs for titles?
That's how it worked in the past. The titles were extremely lengthy and descriptive. At some point humanity thought "nah, snappy is cool 8)" (probably due to limited space in newspaper ads or something) and it is turning out to have been a fad.
For example, a classic: "The life and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, mariner: who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque. Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck wherein all the Men perished but himself. With an Account how he was at last as strangely delivee'd by Pyrates written by himself"
Well, maybe something inbetwixt would be best...
If I weren’t on my phone, I’d run a word count to compare how long that is in comparison to the full title of Fiona Apple’s When the pawn…
That got me curious enough to check. The word counter I found says When the pawn... is 90 words, and Robinson Crusoe is 68. I think When the pawn... feels less imposing to look at since it's a poem and broken into lines, and not a big block of text like Robinson Crusoe.
Traditionally, titles (of a work) were something the author felt was evocative, or funny, or provoking, or artistic; something like that. For books, the title plus the cover was designed to make you want to pluck it off the shelf and open it. Where you might scan across the summary, and then perhaps be driven to scan a page or too. Hopefully finding something you'd like, and thus buy the book.
Now we have electronic stores. With search. Including genre searches that are a bit more reliable than local shops that often had widely differing definitions of what fit into the same genre category.
If someone wants to read zombie books, they're going to include words like "zombie" and "apocalypse" in their searches. What comes up in those searches is what they'll be looking at, and probably (if they do buy) purchasing from.
So while something like "Final Stand" or "Love Lost Long Ago" or "Ashes of Civilization" or whatever might meet the traditional artistic preference for a title, it's shit for getting that book to show on a search. Subtitling "Final Stand" with something like "A zombie story in the apocalypse" will get you visibility.
There are a ton of people who think they can write. The greatest advantage of indie publishing (bypassing gatekeepers) has also turned into the biggest problem; any asshat who (erroneously) believes they can write gets to flood the store the same as authors who actually can write. Which doesn't even touch on the subject of the scammers and other grifters who will try all sorts of tricks to scrape money out of the system by putting up their own listings. Further crowding an already crowded space with things that aren't books but distract/trick readers looking to buy.
Subtitles are kind of silly. But they do increase sales because they can help a book pop up out of the background and put it in front of someone to consider.
They forgot to renew their certificate, so don't log in as credentials won't be reliably encrypted.
This was helpful, if for nothing else, getting me to go back to my as yet unpublished work, and change the subtitle. I see the title and the cover illustration as the hook and the subtitle as the actual subject of the book - with the key search words that will lead google to my theme. Every iteration, and there have been at least a couple dozen, I'm getting closer to the perfect elevator pitch for my project.
I worked on my latest book series for over two years, the whole time wondering how I could encapsulate it in a quick phrase. The title, Lisica, doesn’t mean much. But when I decided to call it a Scientist Soap Opera it all came into focus— the drama, the romance, the mystery.
Hollywood taught me the necessity of a logline. We’re all too inundated with choices to ask for more attention from our prospective readers.