How to Choose a Book Title – 5 Tactics for Bestselling Non-Fiction Books

The title you choose for your non-fiction book can make a huge impact on your sales. A good book title will establish an instant rapport with your readers because they will clearly understand why they should buy it and how they will benefit from your book.

It’s very important because you have only about 3 seconds to grab a person’s interest while browsing on Amazon. Therefore, the EASIER it is to read the title, the more likely a potential buyer will remember your book while browsing through other of your niche books. And eventually buy it.

Titles of Kindle books usually consist of two parts – the main book title and a sub-title:

• The main title is typically short—just two to five words. The reason – the fewer the words, the easier it is to remember and larger the type size they can be set in when creating your book cover, for example, “Book Cover Design Formula”.
• The subtitle can be much longer and includes phrases and keywords that your potential readers would use to find your book on Amazon. It has both – descriptive and search-ability function, for example, “Create Book Covers That Captivate Readers: Complete DIY Book Cover Design Guide for Self-published and Indie Authors”.

Write Your Non-Fiction Book Title with One of These 5 Tactics:

1. Choose a book title that promises your readers to solve a problem or help achieve the desired goal.

Nonfiction readers buy books for a purpose. Usually, they are looking for a specific information that will help improve their skills or solve problems. Consider this when creating your book title.

Compare the following two titles:

• The Visual Design Principles for Advertisers & Marketers

• Improve Your Marketing Results with Visuals That Sell

The first title simply tells what the book is all about. The second title emphasizes the benefits that readers will enjoy. Which do you think is better?

2. Identify your target audience in your book title by naming it or describing its characteristics.

The more obvious you are, the better. Here are some ideas:

• Clearly name your target audience – “Dog Owner’s Home Veterinary Handbook.”

• Describe the problem your readers are experiencing – “How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success.”

3. Use numbers to add credibility to your book title, because people associate numbers with facts.

Moreover, numbers attract attention as they’re differently shaped from letters. This is why they stand out.

The reasons to use numbers in your book title:

• Use numbers to structure your information – “100+ Free Tools to Create Visuals for Web & Social Media”.

• Numbers can make big goals appear easier to achieve, like “10 Steps to Self-Esteem – The Ultimate Guide to Stop Self-Criticism.”

• Numbers emphasize how quickly readers can achieve their goals, like “You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less.”

Mix two of the rules and get a double effect, for example, 10 Steps to Self Esteem in 10 Days.

4. Place your main keywords in your title and subtitle to adapt them for Amazon search engine.

Readers usually search books by phrases and keywords related to the topic. Therefore, you should put the most relevant keywords for your book in its title or subtitle to make sure your readers can easily find it when searching on Amazon. For example, “Book Cover Design Formula: Complete DIY Book Cover Design Guide for Self-published and Indie Authors”. In this case, the main keyword is “book cover design”.

Famous authors don’t need to worry about how easy it will be for readers to find their books because their marketing campaigns and budgets will do that for them. But for the rest of us, we need to make sure it will be easy to find our books by keywords. If you want your book to show up on Amazon every time someone types in “how to draw books for kids,” then you should consider making that your book’s title. Read this article to learn how to find profitable keywords on Amazon.

Also, if you’d like to see which keywords you can use in your title to make it easier discoverable, try Publisher Rocket. This tool will help you find bestselling book ideas, profitable niches, rank better in Amazon, and select Kindle keywords.

5. Use unexpected words, contradictory terms and metaphors to engage your reader’s curiosity.

If you have a huge following and great book launch campaign, you can also use emotional book title, for example, “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday. The contradiction between “trust me” and “I’m lying” evokes curiosity and encourages to read the subtitle. You see – no apparent keywords. That’s because the author can afford to ignore them thanks to great and most probably expensive marketing promotions. But if you don’t have a marketing team and a huge budget behind you, it’s advisable to make use of keywords and Amazon algorithm.

Book Title Experiment by Mail Order Guru Haldeman-Julius

Let me tell you a story. In the 1920s, mail order guru Haldeman-Julius sold more than 200 millions of books, in nearly 2,000 different titles. They were simple little books that cost just 5 cents each and covered a wide range of topics – from Shakespeare to the Debate on Birth Control. Many of them were also self-help “How To” books. What’s more, Haldeman-Julius also conducted an intensive marketing experiment.

To advertise his books, he placed large ads on biggest USA newspapers consisting of only the book titles. All the titles were listed on the order form, and prospects could select the ones they wanted to buy. Since there was no description or selling copy, customers chose the books relying ONLY on their titles. Therefore, the key factor for the success of any of the book was its title.

Haldeman-Julius had a policy that if a book title didn’t sell over 10,000 copies a year, it was revised to a more attractive one. Nothing else was changed except the book title. The results were astonishing. Just by changing the title alone, sales of the same book in some cases increased even by up to 1000%.

The moral of this story is that sometimes all you need for a success is to choose a great book title.

When it comes to choosing the right book title, you need to get inspiration from different resources and brainstorm a lot. Scroll through books on Amazon, including books outside your genre and write down your ideas, along with words that you would like to highlight. Sometimes a catchy phrase will jump out and become part of the perfect book title. Expect the process to take some time. Feel free to generate many book title ideas and don’t stick to one until the last minute before publication. And even then, you can still change it.