STEP 4: PICK YOUR FAVORITES At this point, you should have a long list of title ideas. Once that’s done, you can move on to the next step: picking your titles. I cannot emphasize how important this next step is: Everyone has opinions on book titles. Most of those opinions are stupid and wrong. Even people who get PAID to come up with book titles (editors, publishers, etc.) are usually bad at it. Test #1: Imagine People Saying the Title Here’s a great test as to whether or not you have a good book title: imagine one of your readers talking about your book at a party to other people. If you can see them confidently saying the book title aloud, and the people listening nodding and immediately either understanding what the book is about based on that (and perhaps a sentence or two of explanation) or asking for further explanation because it sounds interesting—then you’ve got a good title. If you imagine any other reaction than this one, you need to re-think your title, and probably change it. Remember, so much of book marketing boils down to word of mouth, and word of mouth is all about people signaling things to other people. You want your book title to inspire and motivate the right people to talk about it, because it lets them signal the right things to their friends. Test #2: (optional) Test Actual Clicks Here’s one of the keys to testing your titles: test both the main title 198 · ThE SCriBE METhOD