What's in a name, Part IV

I love Writer’s Digest, as you already know. Each issue is terrific and I always think it can’t be topped. Then the next issue arrives and it tops the previous one.

This latest issue is no different. The main articles are on Publishing 101: Your publishing survival guide. And while I will mine a number of topics from this issue for my blog in the coming days and weeks, what I am focusing on today is on Page. 44.

I have brought this subject up before, several times, in fact. And I have tried to rely on my best artistic judgment on what is fundamentally a marketing issue. It is the title of my book.

The No. 7 point of the WD article that starts on Page 42 is: Stake a claim on your title before “they” can get at it.

Back in late January in a fit of caution, I decided to change the name of my novel from DEATH AT THE JUNGLE-BUNNY JOURNAL to A MURDEROUS DISPATCH. To accommodate the title, I even went back and changed the name of the newspaper in the novel from the Courier-Times to the Daily Dispatch. But the more I contemplate it, the more I believe the title change was wrong.

Patricia Holt, the writer of the WD article, stated upfront that “the title is your first opportunity to market the book . . . ” It can be risky and potentially controversial. But standing out is not a bad thing. Being timid is.

“If the title is so startling or catchy or provocative that it makes a person want to reach for the book and start reading, you have a beaut” of a title, Holt writes.

Jungle-bunny Journal does that. It pops. It stands out. It could be controversial but it is not a wallflower. It is not a title that will be ignored. So what does A MURDEROUS DISPATCH say? No much, other than the book is about a murder and the writer is redundant.

I still don’t know if, as a title, Jungle-bunny Journal will get me an agent or a publisher. I have no real evidence of it so far. But I have no evidence that Murderous Dispatch will either. So I’m going to do what I should have always been doing -- trusting my judgment.

I like DEATH AT THE JUNGLE-BUNNY JOURNAL. I always have. So, I’m going back to that until some publisher or their marketing guru convinces me otherwise.

Thanks for reading. Trust your judgment and don’t give up on writing.