Education Write A How-To Book - 7 Questions To Ask About Your Titles
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Your title is the most important sentence of your book. Without a great title, your potential reader will never pick up your book, will never read the first sentence and will never be hooked into reading the book. When you write your how-to book you need to take a great deal of care with the title. A great title must compel the reader to pick up the book and read the front copy. That motivation begins the process of buying the book. But how do you ensure that your title is as good as the how-to book you're writing? Here are seven questions to ask yourself when writing the title to your how-to book: 1. Does the title clearly identify a pain point the reader will want to avoid? If you speak to a copywriter you will find that we are all motivated by one of three things. The first of these is the strongest motivator and that is pain. We all want to avoid pain. It may seem negative -- and it is -- but it's also a fact of life. So if your title includes a pain point for the reader it will gain the reader's attention. 2. Does the title clearly identify a pleasure point the reader is seeking? This is the opposite of the previous question. The positive version if you prefer. Unfortunately, avoiding pain is a much better motivator than seeking pleasure. We're far more likely to be willing to work to avoid pain than we are to work to achieve pleasure. 3. Does the title clearly identify a fear that the reader has? This is the third alternative to motivate the reader. Appeal to their emotions. However, like the pain/pleasure duality, motivation is much stronger with the negative emotions. Once we have answered this question we will know if the title is weak. Why? In order to be strong, a title must appeal to either the desire to receive pleasure, the desire to avoid pain or to a base emotion. Unless it does, the title will never be strong no matter how we answer the remaining questions. 4. Does the title make a clear, strong promise? It isn't enough to just state the pain or pleasure or emotion the reader seeks or wishes to avoid. The reader wants a solution. In order to be the strongest it can be, the title to your how-to book must promise a solution. 5. Does the title appeal to the reader's emotions? This is very similar to the base emotions question. However, in this case the appeal is less basic. Whereas the title should be very focused in avoiding a fear or base emotion, this question is more focused on the result and what emotional state will be gained by reading the book. 6. Does the title motivate the reader? In many ways, this is a trick question because if all the rest of the questions are yes then the reader will be motivated. But in any case, the whole point of a title is to motivate the reader to buy your book. Why? Because you have the solution they are looking for within the book. All they need is to be motivated to buy the book. 7. Is the promise in the title realistic? Have you seen books with titles like "Earn $1 Million Dollars Working Only 2 Hours A Day"? Of course you have. Did you believe their promise? Neither did anyone else. Earlier we stated that you need to have a clear, strong promise. This is the other side of that question. It's important to have a clear, strong promise in the title -- but when you write your how-to book, you need to ensure that the promise is kept. Otherwise your reader will feel cheated. And they won't buy a second or third book from you. thesis writing
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
about
this is the place where you can read lots of articles about education.
feel free
to share these articles with your friends!
0 yorum:
Post a Comment