Thursday, September 27, 2007

Titles: Keep them positive.

Maybe you have come up with an incredibly clever, negative title. Lose it anyway. It has been overwhelmingly proven that positive titles sell more books than negative ones ... and positive article titles induce more people to read on than negative ones.

A couple of years ago, Dr. Elmer Towns, who has had many best-selling books, was in our offices and I asked him to sign a book of his that I had gotten when I took a doctoral seminar from him many years ago. He looked at the book and said, "That book never did sell very well. Negative title doesn't work." The book was Is the Day of the Denomination Dead?

When it comes to titles, your best bet is to keep them positive.