Long Book Titles

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris from Dallas.

Hi, Chris.

Hi, Chris. How’s it going?

Pretty good. How are you all?

Okay.

Doing well.

How can we help?

Well, I’ve noticed recently a trend in book titles that has actually become so prevalent that it’s almost a pet peeve of mine now. Really long titles annoy me in the first place because I can never remember the whole subtitle that follows the colon.

But lately, I’ve noticed titles that follow a particular pattern. It’s generally a three- or four-word, pretty catchy title that I think would be fine by itself. But the subtitle follows a pattern of, like, here’s a particular phenomenon. We’re going to talk about the topic of the book. And then they’re going to describe the effect that it has on the world.

So I can give you an example if you want.

On the world, okay.

Yeah, just on the world, on the people, how it affects me. Here’s just one that I’m looking at right now. Brand washed. Tricks companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy.

And actually, if you go onto Amazon.com and you search the phrase and what we can do about it, you will find so many titles.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

That’s interesting.

That’s great.

That’s a great way to find these long, ridiculous titles.

Yeah, and they all end with, and what we can do about it, and how we can fix it, or how we can bring it back. It annoys me because they’re so long and unnecessary.

Yeah, that’s pretty funny. What’s going on there?

I asked some of my friends in publishing about this a while back, and I’ve asked them recently about this as well. And it turns out that it’s basically an old form of search engine optimization. They want to get as much in the title so the whole thing shows up in the card catalogs, shows up in the list of recently purchased books. You just want as much of your title as possible to be as visible as possible so people know what your book is about. Get all those keywords out there.

And it’s not that new. I mean, they’ve been doing it since the Victorian era. They’ve been doing this kind of thing off and on for centuries.

That was before the internet.

Before the internet, yeah. But there’s always been this idea that, so you’ve got the great two, three, four word title, fine. But you still have to sell that short title. And it’s probably not going to be descriptive enough to tell people what your book is really about. You’ve got to engage them. And so, and that’s why that little thing and how to fix it or what to do about it. Those little lines have been proven to work. They sell books.

Aha. Well, that would explain no matter what your politics, you have to appreciate Dick Morris’s title, which is Fleeced. And it’s Fleeced, colon, How Barack Obama Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, The Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbies for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us, and What to Do About It.

Oh, my gosh. I hadn’t even heard that one. That’s the worst.

I mean, why read the book?

Well, that’s why Stephen Colbert’s title.

What is Stephen Colbert’s title?

Oh, yeah. Something I’m great and so are you. So can you. So can you.

Yeah.

He’s just gone for like this complete play on the highly successful wording that’s used in titles. They know what works. We’re probably, maybe we’re past the point of oversaturation. I don’t know. But they’re still doing it.

One of the people on Facebook posted this one. Shock of Grey, the aging of the world’s population and how it pits young against old, child against parent, worker against boss, company against rival, and nation against nation.

Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my gosh. These are examples of titles. We’re not necessarily recommending you read them. You can, your choice. But maybe that works. If I just said Shock of Grey, is it fiction? Is it nonfiction? Yeah. Is it about old people? It could be about abstract art. It could be anything.

Yeah.

Good point.

Hey, Chris, do you have a word for this annoying phenomenon or a term for it?

Oh, gosh. No, I have no idea. It’s just unnecessarily long titles.

And what to do about them.

Exactly. I mean, about that, though, I guess I can grant a long title. It’s okay with me. And what we can do about it. It kind of makes me cringe.

Clearly you have to write a book about this.

I will write that book.

Good.

I’ll let you know.

Okay.

I think I’ll call it short titles, how titles and books recently have become so unnecessarily long and inflated and what we can do about it.

Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it.

Stop listening to your marketing people, for one.

That’s fantastic. Thanks, Chris.

Bye-bye.

Yeah, thank you all so much.

Okay. Bye-bye.

Bye.