Is Your Title Unique? Are You Sure?

Sometimes as authors we come up with titles for our work early on. Occasionally, the title drives the idea for the whole piece.

Before the days of the Internet, once you had an original title in mind, it was probably usable. Now, who knows. Millions of pieces of content and information are floating around out there and new stuff is published every day including websites and books. What this means for authors is that we must be extra diligent to make sure the title we've chosen is actually available in some way for both the book and the web as a domain. I think most people realize this, but I figured I'd mention it just to be sure.

But besides that there's another step with regard to the web that may be even more important and that is looking at sites with similar names. Why would you want to go through the extra time and effort once you've discovered you can buy the domain you desire? Because you may change your mind about that title after all.

For example, let's say the title you want to use is Blue House Rose ( I have no clue if this exists or not, didn't look). Maybe the exact .com domain is available, that's good. Now comes the extra step, how else might someone logically search for this title? Maybe they reverse it like Rose House Blues, or they forget part of it and search Blue House or Blue Rose book. What comes up then?

Sometime what happens is that the site they reach that way is not only unrelated, it's undesirable or inappropriate to most people-that's not good. To further illustrate how easily this can happen, Here are a couple more examples from publicity expert BL Ochman's blog where this happened to a couple of major companies. If this was you considering a book title, hopefully you clearly see where a little extra research could not only save time, money, but maybe more importantly embarrassment and possibly your reputation.

Your book will hopefully go on to sell for years and maybe even long after you've stopped writing. Make sure the title is memorable for all the right reasons.

Good Writing & God Bless,
Cheryl Pickett