Maggie asks: "I have a question about book titles. How successful are you in naming your own books, or must you submit to editors' titles? Is it a group consensus thing? Have you ever had a title assigned to you that you absolutely hated? And since you Wenches are so prolific, can you remember all your titles? *g*"
From Pat Rice:
Because I have a power saw running in the front room and a carpenter opening and slamming the door until my concentration has quit in defeat, I will pick Maggie’s brain again for a topic. I’m just not up to French prisons prior to the revolution right now. <G> Not certain I ever will be, but remind me sometime to talk about how we pick our book subjects and how we choose to fictionalize them.
(I swear, I wrote this over the weekend while I was avoiding the computer, and I didn't see Loretta's column until I posted at 7 this morning, so Maggie gets two books this week!)
But titles are a fun gripe all authors love to harp on. When I first started out, I thought titles were an important clue to the book’s heart. I would carefully select something momentous said within the depths of my huge novel (romances were over 150k words back then), something literary (often Shakespeare), or something unbearably romantic. They were so memorable I don’t remember them now. Which is fine, because whatever they were, they were far more intelligent than LOVE’S FIRST SURRENDER, which was what ended up on my first book. And even the publisher acknowledged the total gagginess fifteen years later when they reissued it as SURRENDER, which makes no sense at all but didn’t cause barf to happen.
Then I moved to a much bigger publisher (so big they had to call me Patricia Rice instead of Pat Rice to fit their ideas of grandeur, I guess). They preferred more tasteful titles: LADY SORCERESS, LOVE BETRAYED. They even used a title I chose—INDIGO MOON. Of course, the editor soon realized that though I told her it came from TAMING OF THE SHREW, it actually resulted from my wacky memory picking up on a modern version of the bard’s famous lines about calling the moon blue. I don’t think another of my historical titles have been used since. Maybe wisely.
I fared better when I drifted into contemporary romance. I had an utterly brilliant editor who accepted my titles of GARDEN OF DREAMS and BLUE CLOUDS, meaningful titles that made me smile happily, especially when I hit the NYT extended with one. Finally, I was on the way to the top.
And then all the publishers in NYC went into a feeding frenzy, houses got bought and sold, editors disappeared, imprints were rethought, and when the dust settled, we were back to finding “commercial” titles. I have nothing against commercial if it sells my books, but the mega-mergers required mega-money and commercial got to be a little desperate. Book titles needed to sound “familiar”—so they’d stand out from the rest of the crowd, I guess. (Is there a little graphic symbol for irony?) Oddly enough, sometimes it even worked. ALL A WOMAN WANTS—a historical, mind you—soared to the tops of several lists, on the wings of the rip-off, I’m convinced.
So these days, titles are essentially chosen by committee. The author turns in her suggestion—my next historical started out as MYSTIC MAIDEN. The editor, if she likes it, runs it past the committee. In this case, the editor was quite happy with the MYSTIC part. (I’m not dumb. She was thrilled with MAGIC for the prior series, and if I’m going to be stuck with the same word on a half dozen books, I want it to be a good one.) But she thought an island of supermen needed a male-oriented cover, which meant a male title. And faster than I could think, she came up with three strong titles using the word Mystic, ran the entire concept past the committee, and I had a gorgeous cover before I’d finished the copyedit. So the maiden has now become the MYSTIC GUARDIAN, and I had to go back and change references to my hero to include his new title. For that gorgeous cover, I’ll accept commercialism!
As to remembering titles—forget it. I’m lucky to remember the title of my current WIP, or as Nora Roberts so famously calls it, POS (please don’t ask for a translation on a family oriented blog, but the first two letters stand for “piece of…”). When I try to blog about books I’ve read, I have to go to my personal library to find the title and author. Forget Amazon. If you can’t remember title or author, you can’t find it there. Search functions are limited that way. If I go into my library, however, I know right where the book is. I think I keep a library as my outmoded title and author research function.
Given that GUARDIAN will be my forty-fourth book and I also have over a dozen short stories and novellas in anthologies, I’m lucky to remember that I’m the author if someone tells me the title. Which probably brings us to the subject of pseudonyms, which fortunately, so far, I haven’t used. But I’m thinking about it. Numerology being what it is, I want one rich in power so I can just call the next title Book #1…
I think I’ve admitted that I’ve bought Terry Pratchett for the first time because of his title WYRD SISTERS. Has anyone else bought because of a title? Or at least picked up the book because the title told you something that caught your interest? Any suggestions on what words or phrases will get your attention? I’ve got this great list of commercial words I consult…