Book Titles

Would you pay someone to come up with a title for your book?

Brett Peterson is hoping you would. He’s started a company called Novel Title. While in college at George Washington University, his professors seemed to think his papers had good titles. So Peterson started helping fellow students give catchy titles to their papers. That led him to think he could start a business helping authors, literary agents and publishers come up with titles that would sell books.

People always said don’t judge a book by its cover, but obviously people always have. But now that people buy their books on Amazon or they’re searching on Google, they don’t see the cover anymore-- they see the title. So the title becomes really key in whether the consumer is going to purchase the book.

Here are a couple of examples of titles he came up with for college papers:
Sour Grapes: The Trials and Tribulations of the Global Wine Market
Hunt for the Real October: The Truth and Myths About the 1917 Russian Revolution

He describes it as both art and science:

The art is trying to create a title that stands out and catches eyes, but the science is to have those keywords in there that are so crucial when you’re searching on Amazon or Google, so that it will pop up in your search. Also I’d say that it has to be a buzzworthy title, something that’s not too long, so that if you’re in a book club or something it’s easy to remember and not too much of a mouthful.

So, how much does he charge for this talent of titling? Here’s what he said in the Observer article:

I have been contacted by aspiring authors trying to break in and trying to have something that’s going to catch a publisher’s eye or a literary agent’s eye. Those have been at $150. With a publishing company I would hope to have a retention, and when they’d have books come up that they find hard to position in the market that I’d just be at their service and title it for them. It’d be a monthly rate.

What do you think? Would his service be worth $150 to you?