A separate part of your making-it-better process should be a review of the title you’ve chosen. By now you’ve lived with your title and you’ve either gotten happily used to it or you’re still a little unsettled about it.
Choosing the right title for your book is like choosing the right name for your baby. No single perfect choice exists; several probably do, and as many as a zillion titles might be adequate.
Whether you’re pleased with your title or not, be sure to ask your beta readers what they think of it. Ask for suggestions. If you get consistent feedback like “It’s too long,” or “I don’t get it,” you should reconsider. Sometimes when we live with a title for a long time we get overly possessive of it. Keep an open mind and play with a few ideas.
Sample great fiction titles:
Rubyfruit Jungle (Rita Mae Brown)
Jurassic Park (Michael Crichton)
Jaws (Peter Benchley)
The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)
Sample great nonfiction titles:
The Oregon Trail (Francis Parkman)
The Stranger Beside Me (Ann Rule)
Guerrilla Marketing (Jay Conrad Levinson)
What to Expect When You’re Expecting (Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazurel)
What about subtitles?
Good question. For fiction, you don’t need a subtitle; they’re rarely used, because most authors find that short and snappy for fiction works best.
For nonfiction, a subtitle can and should tell a lot about your book. It should magnify, or sharpen, your title, like these:
The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom (Slavomir Rawicz)
Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form (Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour)
Nectarine Bounty: The Easy Way to Grow Stone Fruits (Harriet Truxton)
You’ve Got a Book in You: A Stress-Free Guide to Writing the Book of Your Dreams