should make people stop and pay attention to it. Here is what #1 best-selling author Tim Ferriss says about titles: The 4-Hour Workweek also bothered some people and was ridiculed by others, which I took as a positive indicator. It’s not accidental that Jay Leno parodied the book on-air—the title lends itself to it, and that was by design. You can’t have strong positive responses without strong negative responses, and beware—above all—the lukewarm reception from all. “Oh, that’s nice. I think it’s pretty good,” is a death sentence. 2. MEMORABLE AND SEARCHABLE This is not the same thing as grabbing attention (even though many people think it is). It’s much easier to get a reaction out of someone and then be forgotten, than it is to get a reaction and be memorable. Remember, a book title is not only the first thing a reader hears about your book, it’s the one piece of information that a reader has that leads them back to the book itself. If your book is recommended to them by a friend, and they can’t remember the title, then they can’t go find it in a bookstore or on Amazon. Best-selling author Scott Berkun says it well: Often [the title] is all a potential buyer ever gets to see, and if they can draw interest, the book crosses its first of many hurdles in the improbable struggle of getting noticed. But titles only help so much. Most people hear about books the same way they hear about new bands. Or new people to meet. A friend or trusted source tells them it was good, and it was called . The title at that point serves as a moniker. It’s the thing you need to remember to get the thing you want to get and little more. This also means you want the book title to be easily searchable. In the world we live in, search is how people find things now. If your title does not lend itself to easy memorization and searchability on Google and Amazon, that is very bad. 186 · ThE SCriBE METhOD