Here’s something to do instead of working on a Friday afternoon – help me come up with a good subtitle for my book!
Up till now, the book I’ve been laboring over has had this title/subtitle combo:
The Search: Business and Culture in the Age of Google
A week or so ago the marketing team at my publisher came to life and informed me that this subtitle, while not exactly terrible, didn’t really say much – it didn’t *sell* the book, it didn’t declare how big a deal this search thing really is. Not to mention, it didn’t say anything about money, or inside access, or any of the other things which seem to sell books these days.
Now, I’ve been on this planet too long to throw a tantrum and declare that it’s my way or the highway when it comes to subtitles. Long ago, for example, I stopped expecting that the headlines on a magazine’s cover were really about the stories inside – no, they are about selling the stories inside, and that is an important distinction.
OK, so in the book, there’s a lot of stuff that has not been reported anywhere else (so far anyway). This is, in the main, because no one else was insane enough to care as much as I have, nor to interview the hundreds of people I interviewed over the past 18 months. And it’s also true that there is a fair bit of narrative about how big a deal search is in terms of economic impact – from the Google IPO to the entire Search Economy in general.
In any case, from what I can divine, there are a few words or concepts that any normal publisher might want included in the subhead of The Search.
1. Google. Most publishers would probably want the book to be called “Google: Google Google Google Money Sex Google” – but thankfully my Editor is more enlightened than most.
2. Money. As in, lots of it at risk, being made, exchanging hands.
3. Inside Access. As in – this book tells a story no one else has.
But when I saw the marketing team’s first try at a new subhead – “The Quest for Perfect Knowledge and Infinite Wealth in the Age of Google” – I thought to myself – surely we can do better. I mean – Infinite Wealth? (“Big Bucks” was also tossed around….) So I asked if I could turn it over to you guys (understand that when it comes to titles and covers, publishers tend to get pretty territorial). And proving that even New York publishers can swing with the times, they said “Why not?”
So what do you think a good subtitle would be?
The Search: How Google became the world’s biggest lemonade stand
Cheesy, but it will sell books. You don’t sell the most books by being the best writer ever, you sell them by being the worst writer ever:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html
most people not only understand cliches, but also, feel they are descriptive, useful, and correct. It’s their market, we just happen to write books in it :/
The Search: Gooliath Conquers Wall Street
The Search: Googling Google
A few ideas:
The Search: How Finding Things Online Became a Business
Search: A Doorway to the Web
The Search: How We Find Our Way Online
Finding It: How Search Became A Business
The Search: Exploring the Web in the Age of Google
Boy, you’re gonna have a hard time finding a subtitle!
The Search: How Google’s enlightened thinking created billions in wealth, rewrote the rules of business, and changed the world.
The Search: What Happens When URLs die?
The Search: Finding is Money
The Search: Just Google It
The Search: The Web’s Killer App
The Search: Looking for Information and Finding Money
Whenever I think about titles as a sales tool, I’m reminded of the old story about Bob Gottlieb doing an informal poll of his colleagues to determine what would be the *least* selling title/subtitle combination. The winner? Canada: Friendly Giant To The North.
The Search (can we rethink the title, too?):
Inside Google’s quest for universal knowledge and unlimited wealth.
The Search: Billions of results, billions of dollars, the inside story of Google
The Search: Keywords, money, and the rise of Google
Good luck with this.
How about …
I’M FEELING LUCKY: Risk and reward in the battle for Google’s crown
Enough blood, sex and money there?
The Search: How Google Found the Answers to Everyone’s Problems
The Search: How the worlds largest porn database came to rule the world
well it is friday…
Better still …
I’M FEELING LUCKY: Knowledge and Wealth in the Age of Google
The Search: How to find what YOU are looking for?
The Search: What are YOU looking for?
The Search: the story behind the results
or the corny
The Search: Still have found what you’re looking for?
The Search: Cache Value
My contribution:
The Search: Deciphering the googleplex
Does it have to have Google in the title? Understand your point that the name will help sales but is that what the book is mainly about or is it about the search space in general? Why not something more broad?
The Search – What makes Google tick?
The Search – The inside story of the Google empire
The Search – The true story behind the gold rush Google helped launch
The Search – How Google outwitted Microsoft and made untold billions
The Business of Search
By John Battelle
I know they need the “Google” reference up front and the subtitle looks good on the bookstore racks but this sounds more dignified to me. Good luck and congratulations on hitting the home stretch!
The Search: secrets of Google and Wealth
The Search: Google-bling
The Wrath of Khan
First, any writer having trouble with any aspect of their book should consult Michael O’Donoghue:
http://www.nationallampoon.com/flashbacks/writegood/writegood.html
(Scroll to Lesson 3: “Choosing a title”)
That said, my submission:
The Search: How Google made Dot-com Dollars
The “how” gives the inside. And alliteration sells. So does cheese. Mmmm. Cheese.
“How Profit Driven Google and other search engines will decide what we see and hear.”
I think more books that create a sense of urgency get picked up more. There needs to be a hook for good-morning america too….a corralary thought that would naturally arise “do we really want those guys shaping us?”
You could put even more subtitles like the old silent movie “will our hero survive” stuff on the back cover.
(how your buisness will need to respond or not be seen)
(who will manipulate this world to their advantage )
(who are these guys anyway?)
(do we want this and what can we do about it?)
(Trouble that starts with T, that rhymes with G which stands for Google?)
If you really want to sell books you can put a picture of some irracible guy like O’reily and call him a liar, then get him to sue you, and get publicity and sell millions….no…thats already been done. A girls bust in the middle of the oo’s for google seems to be what the car companies do.
Google and the new new internet Goooooooooooold rush. How vision, fearlessness and search index technology turned everyday people into multi-millionaires and the toast of Playboy magazine. The inside story on today’s hottest business trend.
The Search: How Google Made Us Forget How Little We Really Know
The Search: How Google Ventured onto the Holy Grail of Marketing and Paved the Road to the Future of Media.
The Search: Why Google Got Lucky and How it Plans to Get Good
or
The Search: Was Google Lucky, or Good?
[of course there is more to this than Google, right? still… Google in the subtitle for marketing purposes makes sense]
In Search of Google: How the web’s most unlikely company made billions without being evil.
Results: How Google made billions by giving everything away.
BTW, I’ll want an advance copy for this. OK?
If you don’t deliver, I promise I’ll find you. I have my methods. Well, just one method actually. You’ve probably heard of it.
🙂
Google: A peek into the mind of God-or pulling the devils tail?
why must american nonfiction books have these
long over-explanatory subtitles that insult
a reader’s intelligency? why not just pick
a short and stylish title? a good one should
be able to intrigue enough of your target audience.
-rl
Results 1-10 of about 17,300,000
Search, Money and Power: Inside Google
The Search: Google, Money, and the Rest of the Story
The Search: How Google Cannot Help But Be Evil
“The Search: Inside the Quest for The Next Big Thing in The Google Age”
I think “Next Big Thing” works in place of “wealth”, it implies wealth but say a little more. I also think “Google Age” just sounds better than “Age of Google”
Not to make the job of coming up with a subtitle too easy, but … what’s your book about? E.G. is it about Google or about search more broadly?
Search
How Google Found What Everyone Was Looking For.
Search: Making the Engines that Find Our Dreams
Search: Googling our Future
Search: The Drivers of an Economy of Words
BTW, mention of Google in the subtitle implies money these days.
THE SEARCH: HOW GOOGLE CHANGED THE WORLD, TODAY.
THE SEARCH: GOOGLE MAKING MEMORIES LAST A LIFE TIME.
THE SEARCH: JUST GOOGLE IT, A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A GOOGLER.
THE SEARCH: AND HOW GOOGLE FOUND ITSELF.
John,
Here is what I have so far:
The Search: How Google Turned Cache into Cash
The Search: How Google Googled Profit
The Search: Google’s Prophets of Profit
The Search: Googling Profits, Boggling Minds
The Search: How Google Googled Profits and Gobbled Market Share
The Search: Googling Profits, Boggling the Mind
The Search: How Google Googled while Microsoft Goggled
The Search: Googling the Internet’s Holy Grail and The Prophets of Profit (needs fine tuning but there’s something there)
The Search: Googling the Holy Grail and the Prophets of Profit
The Search: The Untold Story Inside the Googleplex
The Search: How Google Googled Cache into Cash (off to the side ‘The Untold Inside Story’)
The Search: The Untold Story of How Google Turned Cache into Cash
The Search: How Google Googled Gold
The Search: A Golden Ticket Inside The Knowledge Factory
The Search: A Golden Ticket Inside the Googleplex
(a play on Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factoy)
Remember, to keep the subtitle shorter and simpler the publishers can always put “The Untold Inside Story” or “The Untold Story Inside the Googleplex” off to the side in a circle (like those book award stickers)or highlight at an angle/slanted on the side of the cover.
Good luck.
Cheers,
SP
I actually think the current subtitle can work fine if you add one word you used in this posting to the primary title:
The Search Economy: Business and Culture in the Age of Google
Some alternatives:
The Search Economy: Business, Culture and Society in the Age of Google
The Google Effect: How the Search Economy is Changing Business and Culture
The Search: Google and the Changing Shape of Business and Culture
I’ll keep thinking…
Google Trek III: The Search for Stock
“Searching for billions inside Google’s sex machine”
Sorry, I got search, sex and money in but no reference to food, our other obssesion there.
By the way, I guess you and your publishers like ” the age of Google” (and you should like your ideas if you are a writer)
So, ….(for fun here you know I like word games and I’m sure your’re relieved about the smaller comitee that you’ve got there ; ) )
…
..if to “win” the project (sort of like the New Yorker cartoon contest?) has a big bias towards working with the “Age of Google” (are you getting at the “age of aquarious” or “the iron age” or both)…
You’re probably doomed in the argument over “perfect knowlege” (you sucked me in with that “perfect search” thing a few months back so its a pretty powerful subject that I imagine you adress.
As for “search vs knowledge” I know its an entirely different thing, having a libary to answer any question at your disposal and knowing the information is an entirely different thing.
But you’ll never explain that to them and they won’t care. You understand that being able to answer a question isn’t the same as being able to draw upon previous personal experience to notice a correlation to unlock a puzzle…basically to think of what to ask or outside the box solutions…but I don’t think you’ll sell them…you’re doomed there ;-).
They’re smart enough to understand but they just want to sell books…unless you go an entirely different way (like the polemic route I suggested earlier) I don’t think we’re going to find the double meaining that they’ve achieved gracefully being vague if the “quest” was one already completed that you’re telling the story of (which some people want to hear) of if it alludes to a quest thats just starting that we can join to get us some of that infinite wealth ourselves along with all that book learning we don’t need to read anymore but is just there at our fingtips waiting for us in the computer room should we have the need for it.
Access to Knowledge and Knowledge are very very different things but heck you got to be nerd to care.
You might (maybe) find another analgous phrase for “infinite wealth”.
Maybe the Fountain of Wealth? Streaming Wealth?
You could go mystic and attract the fantasy reader audience….
The Search: The Quest for the Tree of Knowledge and the Fountain of Wealth…?er??? nah
Maybe if they’re ridiculed enough they’ll think of something else themselves which they will of course like better because they decided so.
Unlimited Knowledge and Perfect Wealth might be more attainable and truthful (there is always more knowledge and if you’ve got your health and after a certain point additional wealth probably brings more problems than it solves). But its too qualified.
If a person needs to use the same words but mix up the order, how about:
“Perfect Search: The Quest for Infinite Knowledge and Emperious Wealth in the age of Google.”
(something like empire which might suggest the wideness of searches reach as well as material wealth? it also throws in that alarming shadow of power games that *I* think is an important aspect of any look at media)Rosebud. The way its frased also casts some shadows in an Eve and the apple, promethean sort of way.
It will be fun to see what you and they pick out?
The Search:
What happens when one company has got all the answers?
Google:
The Search economy: How hypocritical self centered intellectuals fooled the world, got lucky and made big money. Watch the hilarity as Google claims “Do no Evil” while squating on variations of pre-existing name trademarks and getting high powered legal teams to wrongly sue little childrens websites for copyright violation——and lose! Observe as they take credit for revolutionizing advertising in spite of settling and paying a $350 million patent infringment agreement suit with a competing company that was in fact first to the game. Watch with intrigue, as they look down their nose when discussing the number of PHD’s on the payroll and further claim the high road by demonizing competitors in sniffling whiffs of purity of intention over profit–all the while looking the other way and taking hundreds of millions in porno advertising. Be fascinated with stories of a “uniquely disciplined hiring process that demands excellence”, yet marvel as members of this “excellent team” violates pedestrian rules in the IPO process that bush league middle-of-the road corporate lawyers easily do in daily practice. Learn as Google management brainwashs’ workers and uses lame television evening news journalists to fool the public into thinking they are Gods deserving of the title of teflon kings of new media. Then enjoy watching it unravel as competitor’s eventually catch up and rich employee’s quite—realizing it sounds much cooler to be a Google employee outside of the office than the reality of living in the cube of hypocrisy for 12 hours a day.
In the end giggle with Howard Stern about how it is really not that cool to be Google.
Search Google
The Inside Story of How Google Taps the Global Brain (and Our Wallets, Too)
Or, why don’t you ask at Google Answers? If a Google Researcher can provide you with a fitting subtitle, you could include the anecdote of finding it via Google in the book itself!