Courtesy of Writer’s Digest Magazine, here’s this cute little engine from www. lulu.com that analyzes your book title, to discern whether it’s bestseller quality or not.
Naturally I plugged my own titles in. Personally I think I’m pretty good at composing titles, but the utility doesn’t entirely agree with me.
Two of my titles earned 63.7% ratings, which isn’t bad–Wolf Time and The Year of the Warrior.
But Blood and Judgment only rated 26.3%, as did the original title I wanted for Wolf Time… Wind Time, Wolf Time (which I still think is a great title, no matter what anybody says).
Personally I like to have words that start with W in my titles. W has an evocative sound. It reminds me of wind and water.
And Walker.
I have to test this.
“Incredible” earns 63.7%.
“The Failure of Jim Sanders” earns 41.4%.
“Lost on the Moon” earns 20.1%.
“White Men Can’t Jump” earns 26.3%.
“Vanity Fair” has a 63.7% chance of being a bestselling title
“Walking on Ice” has a 79.6%
“The Kite Runner” has a 35.9% chance
“ViewSonic is My Homeboy” has a 26.3%
Now, what can I write under the title “Walking on Ice”?
“Lord of the Rings” came in at a whopping 10.2%!
I gave the engine a try and ‘Portugese Irregular Verbs’ (by A. Mcall Smith) came in at 10.2 percent as well. (How it got that high I don’t know.) If you want something (completely) different Lars, you might give it a try. (A bumbling, socially incompetent philologist vs. the world.) It appears to be written in what I can only call a wodehouse kind of style. I’m listening to it on tape (1/3 so far) and it’s very funny.
p.s. I live on the wrong side of the tracks; and we get a lot of books on tape at the local library. (All of Smith’s books for example.) I get the feeling the librarians feel that most people in the neighborhood can’t read 🙂
I like the sound of that book (in the figurative, not the recorded sense).
Wolf Time is better than your proposed alternative and I’m glad you went with Year of the Warrior rather than Wear of the Warrior despite your love of W’s.
You’re just weally, weally wong.