#ScribesAndMakers day 6: How do you choose a title for your book?

[cstross@wandering.shop]

#ScribesAndMakers day 6: How do you choose a title for your book?

Usually the title comes first, and dictates the book to me. Rarely, the book comes first and I just slap any old title on it before sending it to my agent.

Either way, it doesn't matter: per contract, the publisher has final say over what the book is titled on publication (and the cover and marketing copy). Although they only request a title change about 10% of the time and usually go with my second choice.

[quinn@social.circl.lu]

@cstross When I've been working with publications, I generally put a title on and it's basically always removed. According to a few of my editors, I am very very bad at heds 😁

...I can usually argue for my deks, though

[mattblaze@federate.social]

@cstross I know (from chagrined experience) that authors have no control of the titles/headlines for newspaper and magazine articles, but I had no idea this was also the practice for books. That's even more nuts.

[quinn@social.circl.lu]

@mattblaze @cstross In my chagrined experience, the editors tend to be right, for values of getting the work to actually be read 😂

[mattblaze@federate.social]

@quinn @cstross I've had titles slapped on stuff that invert the point the article is making.

[virtualbri@mastodon.online]

@mattblaze @cstross Jeez, yeah, that's crazy.

[quinn@social.circl.lu]

@mattblaze @cstross yeeeah that's annoying.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@mattblaze @quinn That's really not uncommon in news publications. The owner only reads the headlines so the editors won't get shouted at for printing something that annoys the owner as long as it's got a prejudice-confirming title.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@mattblaze In general, novels only get retitled because of a marketing issue. I had one changed because it was much too close to a major-selling novel that had just come out recently (they wanted to avoid confusion). Another because google searches for it were being swamped by hits on a big Hollywood movie (both had an uncommon word in the title). This sort of thing is annoying but understandable.

[stevebellovin@infosec.exchange]

@mattblaze @cstross Titles are considered part of marketing, which is the publisher's job. When Ches and I were writing our first book, the working title was "Internet Security and Firewall Gateways". Our editor felt that something like that would get lost in the noise, hence the change to "Firewalls and Internet Security". We had trouble agreeing on a cover, though. The editor sent us a cartoon, which we loved—but he'd sent it as a joke. But it was very appropriate, so he went off and negotiated the rights. The final cover is at https://wilyhacker.com/1e/cover.jpg.