Just now, I went on Amazon and checked the top three ebooks in the “nonfiction” category. They are:
#1: “Two Women Walk Into A Bar”
#2: “The Amish Wife”
#3: “If You Tell”
Unless you know these books already, the titles give you no clue as to what they might be about. And yet, they are at the top of Amazon.
Only once you dig into subcategories and the subcategories of those subcategories to get to the the marketing bestsellers, do you find understandable titles like:
“1-page Marketing Plan”
“How To Get To The Top Of Google”
“The Psychology Of Selling”
What gives?
Is it better to have a mysterious and opaque title to suck in aimless passersby? Do clear, benefit-oriented titles just scream “sales pitch” and drive readers away?
I’m sure it’s obvious to you, but I like to flog dead equines. So let me point out that the top three nonfiction books were all written by people with large existing audiences… big celeb endorsements (the author of the Women/Bar book was on Oprah multiple times)… and giant marketing pushes from established publishers.
On the other hand, the marketing bestsellers went to smaller existing audiences and probably had smaller if any marketing pushes (the last one, Brian Tracy’s The Psychology Of Selling, was published in 2006 and probably gets no active marketing whatsoever any more).
In other words, the top of the top nonfiction bestsellers are there in spite of their titles. While for the marketing books, clear, understandable, benefit-oriented titles help overcome other limitations, and sell books that might not sell otherwise.
And on that note, I’d like to tell you that yesterday I recorded a short presentation, 4 Proven Hooks That Sell More Books.
Based on that clear, benefit-oriented title, you can probably guess what the presentation is about.
I will be giving this presentation away as a bonus in a couple days’ time, if you buy a book I will be promoting. But more about that when it’s due.
For today, I’d like to point you to a little book with a clear and understandable title. It’s a title that I know for a fact has sold copies of this book that wouldn’t have sold otherwise.
I know this, because people who bought the book wrote me to say so.
The title is The 10 Commandments Of A-List Copywriters. The author is me.
And if you’d like to get this book, you can find it lurking among the direct-marketing bestsellers on Amazon. Here’s the link: