Looking for Catchy Titles and/or Great Covers

[Lee Sinclair]

Edited:  Currently working on the "Catchy Titles" blog post.  Then will start a new project to write about book covers I like.

I'm working on a (somewhat humorous) blog post about book titles and need some good examples of what I think are great titles.  I'm looking for titles that are unique or intriguing in some way or perhaps cleverly descriptive.  If anyone would like me to consider any of their titles, please post it here.  If you want, you can also include the reason why you think it's a great title.  This blog post won't have a review of the book itself, but I will include a link to your book's Amazon listing, in case readers want to check it out.

[Attebery]

What about "Billionaires, Bullets, Exploding Monkeys?"

[Jaci Byrne]

My book 'Best Friends and Bastards' - started off as 'The Process of Life' can you believe? No? Well, you're not alone - neither could my mentor, editor, publisher or friends - not even my dear old mum. Brainracking ensued and I spent a day writing all the features of my book - pages and pages - and then decided to condense them into three simple words (four if you add the 'and')
first call? Mum - I said very quietly 'What do you think of 'Best Friends and Bastards'?
A Resounding: 'I Love it!' and she just cracked up. My mentor started singing it, editor, publisher et al gave it the thumbs up - so.... there you go... I hope you do too.
Great idea for a blog by the way!

[Lee Sinclair]

Thanks for the suggestions.  I'm hoping to get quite a few titles to talk about so that I have a good variety, which means I won't know which ones I'll be using until I have more.  I already had a few, but it was taking too much time trying to randomly collect them.

[George Berger]

If they don't have to be our books, I've long loved the title of "Love Warps the Mind a Little" by John Dufresne. The title of Anne McCaffrey's "Get Off the Unicorn" is almost as memorable as how it came to be. "Bloodsucking Fiends" tells you everything you need to know about that particular Christopher Moore novel. I've never read P.J. O'Rourke's "Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut", but I agree with the sentiment. Jonathan Lethem's "Gun, With Occasional Music" goes right over most people's heads. Having worked in a bookstore, people often do "Steal This Book", even today. Neil Gaiman's "The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish" is exactly what it says on the cover, amusingly enough.

You heard the story of why Howard Stern (remember him?) called one of his books "Private Parts", right? That's pretty much why I called my first novel "Mendacities". (Well, that, and because nobody'd written a novel called that yet, something I should perhaps have contemplated the significance of...)

[Kathleen Valentine]

My very, very, very best-selling book (over 150 per day) is The Crazy Old Lady in the Attic and I truly believe that title has helped drive sales!!!

[Julie Christensen]

Doris Lessings "Briefing for a Descent into Hell."  Love that one.

[Emma Daniels]

Love Is A Drag. It's about a gay couple in which the more feminine one decides to dress up in drag in order to pass as a woman at his boyfriend's extramely conservative work party, with some very humourours results. Anyway I really like the title.

Or you could try one of mine - Giving Up The Ghost, in which a ghost becomes human again, so he gives up on his ghostly existance, reversin what the saying actually means.

[ShayneHellerman]

I love the titles of Jeff Strand's Andrew Mayhem books: Graverobber's Wanted (No Experience Necessary); Single White Psychopath Seeks Same; Casket For Sale (Only Used Once); and Lost Homicidal Maniac (Answers To "Shirley").

I also second Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore, along with You Suck and Bite Me, the second and third books in the series, and The Stupidest Angel.

Oh, and Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed In Blood. Just the title sends shivers up my spine.

[Shayne Parkinson]

A couple that have caught my eye because of unexpected word usage that makes me look and then look again:

Take the Monkeys and Run
Impeding Justice

I've had quite a few readers tell me that my own title Sentence of Marriage made them curious enough to want to find out what I meant by it.

[George Berger]

One other I just remembered: "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard."

And yeah, everything about The Stupidest Angel is entertaining.

[Cathymw]

I'll second Karen Cantwell's Take the Monkeys and Run and her second Citizen Insane.

I also, well, like my titles of Dead to Writes and Two Wrongs don't make a Write (the main character is an author).

In general, the cozy mystery genre has great "punny" titles and usually some common uniting theme:

Donna Andrews has a bird theme, her latest include The Real Macaw, Stork Raving Mad, and Owls Well that Ends Well.

Here's one that sounds cute "Blue Suede Clues".

[Lee Sinclair]

This is great.  All these suggestions are really going to help me look at a broader range of titles.  The ones I already had are for humorous books, so I needed more titles from other genres to look at.  I'm also curious about what other people think makes a good title.

[Lee Sinclair]

@ George
I was crushed to see that the title to your book is not actually "Unmarketable Dross, Vol. VI - the worst $2.88 nobody will spend."  To me, that falls under the category of a great "Made you look at it" title.

[BrentNichols]

"Time Travellers Strictly Cash," by Spider Robinson, has to be one of the best titles ever.  It's a collection of science fiction short stories.  I also really loved "The Fifth Elephant", fantasy by Terry Pratchett.  Both titles made me laugh.

Neil Gaiman's fantasy "American Gods" has a title that shows you its ground-breaking high concept in two little words.

Peter O'Donnell wrote an adventure novel called "The Imossible Virgin" that makes people stop and stare on their way past my bookshelves.

Harry Harrison wrote a series of science fiction novels about a character called the Stainless Steel Rat.  I think they grab attention because people want to know what that could possibly mean.

Barbara Hambly wrote a historical urban fantasy called "Bride of the Rat God."  That's a title that screams, "Never mind if it's any good, buy me now!"

I really like my title "Bert the Barbarian," but the book-buying public clearly disagrees with me, so never mind.

Someone on the boards had a short story called "Guns Don't Kill People, My Uncle Does."  She said it sold like hotcakes, largely because of the title she thought.

[George Berger]

@ George
I was crushed to see that the title to your book is not actually "Unmarketable Dross, Vol. VI - the worst $2.88 nobody will spend."  To me, that falls under the category of a great "Made you look at it" title.

Sorry to disappoint, but I'm just playing to my strengths. (i.e. disappointing people.) I have actually threatened to title a book something along those lines (I think I once announced the impending release of something like "You Weren't Going to Read This Anyway, Vol. II" on Twitter...) though that seems a little passive-aggressive towards readers who might actually buy it. I did it that way in my signature to avoid getting one Google Alerts notification every time I posted in a new thread...

As to the Stainless Steel Rat books, I actually wrote a little something-something some time ago about that series, and how it changed my life, and how I really only discovered it because of the bizarre title.

And let us not forget, when we mention catchy or memorable titles, Robert Rankin's "Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse". Oh, and to go along with "Time Travellers Strictly Cash", there's also "Lady Slings the Booze", one of the funniest novels set in a NYC brothel, ever.

[Lee Sinclair]

George, I'm actually thinking about using your "Unmarketable Dross, Vol VI" title (with the correct link to your real book) in my post under the Honorable Mentions section (although that may be fudging the honorable part a bit).  But it would really be a perfect ending to wrap up my post.

Cathy, I really like the cover of the book you edited (Flurries), and may consider using it in a different post when I blog about covers I like.

[Andrew Biss]

An Embarrassing Odour seems to get people's attention 

[jmkwriter]

One Stiletto in the Grave and Fruitbasket from Hell are pretty catchy. But then, I'm bias. 

[Steve Silkin]

I've had good feedback on The Cemetery Vote and The Bishop Moves Diagonally.

A friend once saw a panel discussion featuring the agent who sold "Go West Young F*****-Up Chick." She was asked how many pages she read before she knew she could sell it. "I didn't even open the manuscript," she said. "I know I could sell it when I saw the title."

[Millard]

"SHUT UP AND BUY ME YOU F***!"

or

"Anyone Who Doesn't Buy this Book is a Paedo"

[Lee Sinclair]

Right now I'm trying to firm up the last of my honorable mentions and I was sort of hoping for a really good pun or word play title to fill out my list.

As I mentioned, my next project will be writing about book covers I really like, so I'd be interested in any suggestions.  Maybe I should rename the title of this thread.

[George Berger]

Right now I'm trying to firm up the last of my honorable mentions and I was sort of hoping for a really good pun or word play title to fill out my list.

Piers Anthony's Isle of View? Or Neuromancer?

(Edited to add the classic palindrome compilation I Love Me, Vol I.)

[Donald Wells]

I have a poetry book titled, SEX POEMS FOR VIRGINS. I've sold less than a hundred copies, but then, it is poetry, so I'm not surprised that it rarely sells. Still, I've been advised to change the title more than once.

[Doomed Muse]

Lots of good suggestions already in this thread.

Of my own, I'm pretty amused by "Twice Drowned Dragon" for dumbly geeky reasons.  My favorite of my titles would be "The Scent of Sunlight".  That's a more serious title/story though.

[Sebastiene]

Snow Falling on Cedars.

It's not my book title, but I've always loved that one. I try to include some menace in my titles considering the kind of genre writing I do, so:

Dead World : http://www.amazon.com/Dead-World-ebook/dp/B005VWP03Y
Intense (coming soon)

[Ben White]

"John Dies At The End" always struck me as ... um, striking.

As a younger person I was in love with Dragonlance from the moment I heard the title "Dragons Of Autumn Twilight".

Have to second or third or whatever The Stainless Steel Rat, too.  Although I have to admit to some initial disappointment (when I was ten or whatever the age I was when I discovered them) that the books were not about a literal stainless steel rat.

[Lee Sinclair]

The problem I'm running into now is that there are a whole bunch of suggestions here that I like equally well so I'm having trouble picking just one or two to fill the last couple of slots on my list.  I do like "The Scent of Sunlight" and that might be a good choice because the majority of my other choices are "clever/humorous" kinds of titles so a more serious title would help balance out my list.

[Sophrosyne]

Somebody Tell Aunt Tillie She's Dead. I've had a lot of readers tell me they picked it up because the title intrigued them. That and the cartoonish cover.

[Sean Patrick Fox]

Gotta love Terry Brooks's Magic Kingdom for Sale: Sold! which is Book 1 of the Landover series (imho his best work).

[LisaGraceBooks]

Two of my favorite kids books are "Everybody Poops" which is what it literally is about (my favorite is the section with the animals that poop on the run) and of course, (not for kids, but for new parents) Get the F*** to sleep" beautiful illustrations and funny, funny poem-like writing.

[scslawin]

Actual book titles:

"If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start with Your Legs: A Guide to Understanding Men"

"Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Good-bye!"

"Babies and Other Hazards of Sex: How to Make a Tiny Person in Only 9 Months, with Tools You Probably Have around the Home"

"What Are These Strawberries Doing on My Nipples? ... I Need Them for the Fruit Salad!"

And I like this cover:

[Jena H]

My son bought a book once called "Steal this Computer Book."  And then of course there's the John Madden title "Hey, Wait a Minute, I Wrote a Book!"

[Connie Chastain]

This is not my book, and the author is not self-published but the book title is just marvelous --

In Deep Voodoo by Stephanie Bond.

http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Voodoo-Stephanie-Bond/dp/0060820578