Mel’s Ten Tips on Creating a Title for your e-book

I have to assume that you’re interested in creating a book on the Ourboox platform. If you are, then I am here to help. If you aren’t then some of the tips may not be applicable.

With Ourboox, the moment you publish the book, the title you give it becomes the url of the book. In other words, here is the url for this book:

http://www.ourboox.com/books/mels-ten-tips-on-creating-a-title-for-your-e-book/

I can change the title after I’ve published it. You can see that I have subsequently added “Mel’s” at the beginning of the title, after publishing this book. But the url doesn’t change.

So my first tip is: you should give the book a tentative title while you are working on it. This will help you focus on the general theme you have chosen.  You can change it as you go along. But as soon as you publish it, it becomes the url  of the book.

The First Tip is to choose a ‘tentative title’. This will help you focus on your topic.

Second tip:

If your book is in Hebrew, Arabic, or a language that does not have Latin characters, I suggest that you choose an initial title in English. This will keep the url nice and simple and searchable. Otherwise, you might end up with a url as long as the Chinese wall. This is what can happen if you publish a book with a Hebrew title:

http://www.ourboox.com/books/%D7%97%D7%91%D7%A6%D7%9C%D7%AA-%D7%94%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%AA-%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%92%D7%A9%D7%AA-%D7%90%D7%AA-%D7%93%D7%A8-%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A7%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%95-%D7%90/

The link does work, and you can always give it an alias (using tinyurl for example), but why bother? Publish it with an English title, and then change it to the one you want to use.

Tip number three:

Avoid extremely short titles of a word or two. Search engines learn about your book from the title and need enough information to categorize and rank it optimally.  On the other hand, they don’t like overly long titles. Thus, titles should aim for about five words. This of course is no strict rule. There are books with short titles and long ones, but our experience suggests that titles of four to six words work best. And even if you want a long title, I suggest that you initially publish with four or five words in the title (to keep the url a decent size), and then change it after publishing. The guy who wrote “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time” wasn’t thinking about search engines. He didn’t need to.

The book will always appear on the website with the newest title change (even though the url remains the same).

And don’t worry if your title has already been used on the site. Ourboox automatically adds a /2 to the url if it’s the second book to use exactly the same title.

Tip Number Four:

Titles should summarize your book in just a few words. This is a challenge. How do you describe a book in five words? The answer: you do your best. Many classic books in your local library have titles that are less than five words!!! Count of Monte Cristo and Tale of Two Cities are names of famous books with just a few words. No need for more! Remember, the whole story doesn’t have to go into the title. This relates to my next tip.

Tip Number Five:

Leave some mystery. “The Count of Monte Cristo” doesn’t name the count in the title. Dicken’s “A Tale of Two Cities” doesn’t say which two cities. The mystery of what’s missing will encourage people to open your book. So instead of calling your book “Things my Dog Told me”, you might call it “Things my Dog Didn’t tell me”. Ok, it’s six words long. But let’s not get picayune.

Tip Number Six:

Check alternative spellings. If your book is about yogourt, I suggest you check out various spellings and pick the one that is most commonly used. If your title has a word that has a British and American spelling, then I suggest you use one in the original title (url) and following publication, change the title. That way you will be covering both bases. On the other hand, if your book is only for English and French speaking Canadians, then yogourt will work both ways.

Tip number seven:

Consider using special names and places. I wrote a book two years ago which I called “Bob’s new job”. After writing it I thought that Bob was too common a name, and decided to call my hero (or anti-hero) Nick, after Copernicus. Sometimes it’s a good idea to give your character a special name. The serious laughing hyena in one of my Dr. Cluck books is called “Gloomeris“. It was the idea of Rotem Omri and it stuck. You’ll find it very quickly on Google Search.

There are many books on autumn leaves in New York. If your book is titled “Autumn Leaves in Irkutsk”, it will stand out in the crowd (but please make sure it’s about autumn in that city).

Churches in Irkutsk

Tip number eight:

Consider writing a series that share a similar title. For example, this book is one in a chain of many “ten tips” books I have written. If you search for ten tips, you just may find one of my books somewhere.

Tip number nine:

Unbelievable works too. If you call your book “Buying a Car for a Nickel”, people will believe that it’s worth a look. But don’t let them down. Deliver the goods. And you can use this photo here, it’s copyright free just for you!

Tip number ten:

Don’t fret it. The title is important but not critical. f the book is wonderful, people will read it.