{"id":8433,"date":"2020-03-05T08:02:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T13:02:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8433"},"modified":"2020-03-05T08:02:24","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T13:02:24","slug":"book-title-sales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8433","title":{"rendered":"Book Title = Sales?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Maybe you\u2019ve wrestled a fair bit with\nchoosing a title for your new book. Now comes Jim\nMilliot<\/a> in Publisher\u2019s Weekly<\/em> to tell you it actually matters for\nyour book\u2019s marketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Milliot describes an online study\nconducted last fall by the Codex Group, involving nearly 4000 book buyers and\nmore than 50 new and forthcoming titles. The study examined whether a book\u2019s\npresentation encouraged prospective readers to browse, as measured by the\nnumber of clicks the books\u2019 \u201cread more\u201d buttons received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As valuable as such information should\nbe to authors, the study has a number of features that limit the interpretation\nof its results. I\u2019d like to know more about those 4000 readers\u2014gender and age\nbreakdown, genre preferences, are they regular online purchasers?, and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

All 10 of the most actively browsed\nbooks have women protagonists, several involve children, marital relationships,\nand female friendships. Were the 50 books tested skewed in this direction, or\nis it that people who like that type of book are more curious about them? It\u2019s\nworth noting that, even the best-ranked books received no more than one in four\n\u201cread more\u201d clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plowing on, here\u2019s the bad news\u2014or good\nnews if you\u2019re published by Amazon. Eight of the top 10 books receiving clicks were\nfrom Amazon Publishing\u2014a data point that would be more impressive if we knew\nwhat proportion of the 50 were published by Amazon. Still, five of these highly-rated\nAmazon titles were among last year\u2019s 11 top-selling ebooks. An attractive cover\nmeant more than taking a deeper look, it meant readers clicked the \u201cbuy now\u201d\nbutton too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This suggests Amazon is doing something\nright, and that may by particularly important for you if you\u2019re a new author,\nas were some of the authors among the top 10, if you don\u2019t have a pre-existing\nfan-base, if you\u2019re experimenting with a new genre, or if you write in the\ngenre (women\u2019s fiction) whose readers responded most strongly in this research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So, how does Amazon do it? For two of the three most popular books in this test, participants said it was the book\u2019s title<\/em>, not the graphics, that drew them in. Hunh. I\u2019d find this more persuasive if they tested titles alone, on a blank cover, and Milliot\u2019s article doesn\u2019t suggest they did that. It\u2019s hard to separate the effect of a title from the overall\u2014and often more memorable\u2014artwork behind it. Reading the list of titles of the top 10 books makes this finding even more surprising. The most frequently browsed book, for example, was After, <\/em>pictured (though I can\u2019t be sure this is the version people in the test saw). Without the photograph, the title wouldn\u2019t carry much meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe After<\/em> succeeded because Amazon tries hard to ensure that title and cover art reinforce each other. (To illustrate, see “Together, they signal readers about the book\u2019s contents and help them know whether they\u2019d like it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a lot riding on these choices. Everything\u2014art, title, cover copy\u2014is part of your story\u2019s package. Make good choices!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday\u2019s post<\/a> provided a few things to think about when choosing the book title that will make an interesting and lasting impression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo (top): Annette G for Pixabay<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe you\u2019ve wrestled a fair bit with choosing a title for your new book. Now comes Jim Milliot in Publisher\u2019s Weekly to tell you it actually matters for your book\u2019s marketing. Milliot describes an online study conducted last fall by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Book Title = Sales? Everything\u2014art, title, cover copy\u2014is part of your story\u2019s package. Make good choices!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,64,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-promotion","category-publishing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/book-store-shop.jpg?fit=306%2C416&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2c1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8436,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8433\/revisions\/8436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}