dead to the world

How important is the title of a book? It’s an accepted fact that the cover image plays a very large part, in bookshops at least, in how well a book sells. I’ve bought a book before simply because I like the picture on the front cover. But I don’t recall ever having bought a book on the strength of its title, so I’m wondering how important a title is. I’m thinking of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book. Both wonderful stories but are the titles especially enticing? Did the titles alone encourage anyone to buy? Of course apart from grabbing a potential buyer’s interest a title should also give an insight into the story between the pages, something the above mentioned titles absolutely do.

I set out to write my story with only one title in mind, Dead To The World. It gives insight into the story and also sets a tone so a reader will know what to expect. I should have checked early on, before I got wedded to it, that it had not been used already. I felt really deflated when I found out it had, by Charlaine Harris whose series of True Blood novels (including Dead To The World) were collectively turned into the hit HBO TV series True Blood.

Now apparently a book title cannot be copyrighted so legally there is nothing to stop me using my first choice but do I still want to? One problem I foresee is that my eBook so titled would sink without trace in the search engine rankings when pitched up against such a big hitter. But if I don’t use it then I will have to come up with another title, and that has been proving very difficult so far. I’ve had dozens of ideas but they have all either been taken already or fallen short of capturing the essence of my story in the way my original choice did.