Do you really want your Kindle book to sell?
If your book cover is lucky enough to catch a reader’s attention, what is the next key element to keep them engaged?
The title of your book is one of the key elements of your book’s sales funnel.
The purpose of your book title is to peak the reader’s interest and help them make a decision, that your book is going to meet their requirements.
Your Book Title is a Key Element, in the Sales Funnel of Your Kindle Book. Click To Tweet1. How Do You Start to Choose a Book Title?
Most Non-Fiction books are written to solve a problem for the reader. If a book is about making $30,000 in 30 days the title can seem to write itself.
For Fiction it is good to choose a book title that matches the genre.
One of the easier ways to start is to use an online book title generator.
You can find title generators for most genres of books (by simply typing “book title generator” into google).
Here a few links to a variety of Title generators out there:
- Random Fantasy Novel Generator
- Random Western Title Generator
- Random Romantic Book Title Generator
- Mystery Title Generator
- Science Fiction Title Generator
2. How Will Readers Find Your Book?
Some books may be found by using a genre search, i.e. a reader may search for “romance” or “western” in Amazon’s book section.
Most Non-Fiction (and any remaining Fiction) book titles are found via the answers from a keyword search.
If a reader wants a book on how to make a million dollars, they may just type in “how to make a million dollars”.
The Words in your book title are therefore relevant to matching up with the words that readers use in their searches. Amazon’s system uses an algorithm (a set of mathematical formulas) to determine which book titles show up in each search.
Keywords Optimization
You need to remember that your book title is not just a collection of keywords. Calling your book “Gold, Finance, Money, Investments” may seem logical if you want it to show up in keyword searches but if it did show up it would make little sense to a reader.
For Non-Fiction Books there is a tendency just to create a book title that explains the subject of the book e.g. “How to Make $30,000 In Property Investing”.
There are various tools out there (including Merchantwords) that allow you to analyze the relevance of keywords in searches.
Short (One or Two Word) main book titles can be catchy and allow a large Font to ensure it can be read in a small thumbnail image.
Short titles have the disadvantage of not explaining what the book is actually about. It is therefore beneficial to include a longer sub-title to supplement a short main title.
Sub-titles can help you in several ways:
- They explain the meaning of a short main book title.
- They allow you to include more keywords in a book’s title.
3. How Will Readers View Your Book Title?
Book searches on a kindle mean that your book cover is being viewed as a small black and white, thumbnail image.
Minimizing the number of words in your books main title may make it more legible in a smaller image but this also dependent on the font of the text.
A Font such as LUCIDA HANDWRITING may look arty on a large book image but becomes harder to read when viewed in a reduced size. Some Fonts have specific licensing rules so ensure that you check this out before using non-standard fonts for your book title.
Cleaner square Fonts such as TIMES NEW ROMAN or GEORGIA can be a better option.
Having the main title in a large font (to draw attention) and a sub-title in a smaller font, needs to be balanced against the legibility of the smaller fonts when shrunk down.
Experiment with the Title and subtitle sizes in a simple MS Word document can give you an idea of how the title will be viewed. Just reducing the size of the documents display on the screen will provide you some basic guidance.
The Final Words
The first three steps in your book Sales Funnel are engaging potential readers with:
- Your Book Cover.
- Your Book Title.
- Your Book Description.
Your book title is one of the key elements of your book’s sales funnel.
It needs to attract the reader’s attention but also be optimized to get the most out of Amazon’s algorithm.
If you can maintain a reader’s engagement, there is more chance that they will purchase your book.