Using A Poll To Help Find A Book Title

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I have a book ready to publish on Kindle. After years of writing and polishing tens of thousands of words I just have to think of a few words for the title. This seems as difficult as writing the whole book, because the title is a book in miniature.

I thought some customer research might help. After discarding dozens of titles, four were left. We posted these on Facebook, and asked friends for their preference. The choices were:

a) Putney Bridge

b) Best Eight

c) One King Two Planets

d) Frost Hardened Juniper

Here are the results – thank you to those who responded:

Putney Bridge 5

Best Eight 4

One King Two Planets 10

Frost Hardened Juniper 3

Now I know this was hardly a large sample of respondents, and you might not call an election result, or calculate a drug safety profile with these numbers. Nevertheless, there was a clear winner – One King Two Planets. Interestingly, this was the most obviously “high concept” title on the list. High concept is the Hollywood blockbuster style of title, encapsulating the basic premise of a film using the minimum of words, as in Planet of the Apes, or Snakes on a Plane.

Out of the choices available, One King Two Planets does do the best job of summarising the basic plot of the book. It seems clear and simple but does provoke questions, as in how is one king supposed to cope with two planets, and what is an old fashioned king doing in a sci-fi scenario of multiple planets anyway? There might also be a nod to the way people use their leaders as symbols to both unite and divide themselves.

So this was a useful exercise with an interesting result. To be honest the winning option was not my favourite. I preferred titles which had resonance for me having written the book – Best Eight, Putney Bridge. I won’t go into why they mean more to me, because, if you were someone looking for your next read, I wouldn’t be around to explain all the deep and meaningful nuances of my favourite titles. As a writer, it can be hard to step back and put yourself in the position of someone looking for a title to catch their eye. A poll can help put you there.