This is an excerpt on writing great titles from my interview in the Virtual eBook Expo 2
Judith Sherven and Jim Sniechowski, best-selling authors, and Ph.D’s interviewed me.

Jim:One of the difficulties Judith and I had in writing our books is creating titles, because the title has to do two things, it has to1. tell the person what the book is about and number2, in such a way that it draws the person toward the title and into the book.

I’ll tell you what Ellen, I’ll write three books this year if you’ll write all the titles, because they were so difficult for us to write. Ellen, how do you create your titles? How do you do that?

Ellen: That’s a great question. First, you actually brought up a very good point without saying it, which is-cause we write quality, but a mediocre eBook with a great title will do far better than a great eBook with a mediocre title.

Jim: Plenty of books with great titles have sold a ton.

Ellen:Yes so that’s number one, titles are important. One of the ways you can do it is to model other titles that have been successful and a perfect example is Think and Grow Rich. Now there’s Speak and Grow Rich, Meet and Grow Rich there’s a million of them.

Jim: Right.

Ellen: The One-Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and even Mark Victor Hansen someone of his stature wrote One-Minute Millionaire, so there are certain things that just grab people’s attention. Another one is The 4-Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss that was originally going to be called The Vagabond Millionaire.

What Tim did was he got online, he took advantage of the Internet, he tested it and he asked people, which one they liked better. So it’s a combination of finding things that are catchy.

I go way deeper into this in the Quick-Start 3-Day eBook Authoring Workshop, but there are many ways that you can do it. You can use repetition, get organized and get published. You can use something that you turn from a verb to a noun, so luck becomes The Luck Factor, The Moving Cure. There are a lot of different ways that you can do it.

We don’t have time to go into all of them here, but that really is the key to doing it. Looking at what is catchy or sparks curiosity, things that have certain sounds that go together and then the other thing is sounds that go with what you’re doing.

There are soft sounds and hard sounds, so if you have like Spontaneous Healing, with the ‘h’ sound we think of healing. Power Aging is a hard sound, you think of power, so you want your titles to be congruent with what you’re doing.

The last one I want to leave you with and I love this is there’s one called…

Judith: While you’re thinking I want to tell one of my favorite stories about a title, which is a young girl who has a worm business. She grows worms and sells worms to gardeners who want the soil enriched by her worms. And the mother said to the girl…

This is a true story; the mother said to the girl you should have a name for your business. The young girl said I do it’s ‘Wormily Ever After’. Now it’s only three words, but you want to keep your title short. And, we’ve all heard happily ever after forever, so how easy is it to remember Wormily Ever After?

Ellen: Yes and those work. Those can definitely work, but here’s the one I was trying to think of that made me fall over. A model wrote this, it’s a huge success and it’s called Skinny Bitch.

(My understand is) They aren’t experts they’re just people who understand the streetness of it, I guess is the way to say it versus the academics who would write How to Lose Weight and give it more of an academic kind-of-a- thing.

It’s coming up with these things that are catchy that gets people’s attention that hits them emotionally. That is what is most important in a title. Again, like I said we don’t have time to go too much more into it here, but that’s the crux of it. We go way into that in the Quick-Start 3- Day eBook Authoring Workshop.

Judith:That’s so great and crucial.

To learn more and to register for all 7 FREE preview calls for the Virtual eBook Expo 2 Homestudy Release go to www.virtualebookexpo.com Don’t worry if you can’t make them all live there is a replay after each call.

Ellen Violette helps people design and redesign their online businesses to live the lifestyle they want and make a 6-figure income using an eBook to build their brand so people know, like and trust you as quickly as possible! To learn more go to www.theebookcoach.com and grab your free pdf “9 Deadly Mistakes To Avoid For Outrageous eBook Profits!”

Her next ebook workshop will be in Los Angeles, June 24th, 25th, 26th, and 27th, 2010 To learn more go to www.3dayebookworkshop.com/live

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