BookBub, that popular book recommendation service, has run a very useful graphic piece for authors entitled “What are the Most Popular Title Trends in Your Genre?”, illustrating the most popular word choices for titles in various genres through a series of word clouds. The methodology, as explained in their Slideshare presentation of the word clouds, is that “In the past year, BookBub has run over ten thousand books as Featured Deals. We collected the titles from each one and and organized the data by category in order to find the most popular words used to name books.”
BookBub does warn that “these word clouds represent the most-used words in each genre, not the highest-selling.” (So, for instance, no “Sematery” in Horror, or “Lambs” in Thrillers.) If you’re a budding self-published author, these may help you meet reader expectations, but they may not guarantee a hit. And this is going to be an ever more crucial issue with more and more self-published writers pushing their work out there. (Who would have ever expected “Grey” to headline a breakout success, for instance?) Still, there are some surprises. (“Pinchard” in Chick-lit? “Kennedy” in Bios & Memoirs?)
For some more targeted advice on how actually to hit that catchy title, you could try here. Or here. But these word clouds are at least a start. Oh, and according to this, for my first book of stories, due out in December, I’m already screwed. Oh well …
