To write a book title, decide what a stranger needs to learn from it, usually the genre, the mood and the hook, then write dozens of candidates of different kinds and test a shortlist on real readers. A strong title is short enough to say aloud and remember, fits the shelf the book belongs on, and raises a question the book answers. In the US you can't copyright a title, so two books can share one, but a famous match in your own genre can send your readers to the other book.
This page is about naming a book: the main types of title, the conventions of each genre, a step-by-step method with a shortlist test, the famous books that changed titles late, and what the law protects. Titling an essay is a different job, covered in how to title an essay. If you only need to format a book's title in your own writing, the short answer is italics, and the FAQ at the end has the details.
What a title has to do
A title is read in a second, usually beside a cover and an author's name, by someone deciding whether to look closer. In that second it has two jobs: put the book on the right shelf in the reader's head, and make them curious. A good title also passes five tests:
- It signals the genre. A Court of Thorns and Roses promises fantasy and Gone Girl a thriller before anyone reads the cover copy.
- It's easy to say and spell. Books travel by word of mouth, and a title nobody can spell is hard to find.
- It sticks. A reader should still have it the next day.
- It's findable. A search for it should bring up your book, not a hundred others.
- It's true to the book. A title that promises a thriller on a quiet literary novel finds the wrong readers.
Types of book titles, with examples
Most titles fall into a handful of types. Write candidates in every type, even the ones that don't seem to fit.
| Type | Classic examples | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| TypeA character's name | Classic examplesEmma (1815), Jane Eyre (1847), Rebecca (1938) | Good forCharacter-driven fiction, when the person is the draw |
| TypeA place | Classic examplesMansfield Park (1814), Wuthering Heights (1847), Middlemarch (1871–72) | Good forNovels in which a place shapes everyone |
| TypeAn object | Classic examplesThe Scarlet Letter (1850), The Moonstone (1868), The Maltese Falcon (1930) | Good forMysteries and literary novels built around one thing |
| TypeA pair of ideas | Classic examplesSense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Crime and Punishment (1866) | Good forNovels about a conflict of values |
| TypeA situation | Classic examplesThe Man Who Was Thursday (1908), Murder on the Orient Express (1934) | Good forPlots with a hook you can state |
| TypeA question or a statement | Classic examplesDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), Things Fall Apart (1958) | Good forBooks with a strong voice or argument |
| TypeA number or a coined term | Classic examplesNineteen Eighty-Four (1949), Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Catch-22 (1961) | Good forSpeculative and satirical fiction |
| TypeA phrase from another text | Classic examplesThe Sun Also Rises (1926), Brave New World (1932), Of Mice and Men (1937) | Good forBooks in conversation with older ones |
Titles borrowed from older texts
A quotation title carries the weight of its source, and readers who know the source get a second meaning. Public-domain texts are a deep well:
- The Sun Also Rises takes its title from Ecclesiastes, one of the novel's two epigraphs: “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.”
- For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) comes from John Donne's Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), the passage that begins “No man is an island” and ends “it tolls for thee.”
- Brave New World borrows Miranda in The Tempest: “O brave new world, / That has such people in't!”
- Of Mice and Men comes from Robert Burns's “To a Mouse” (1785): “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley.”
- The Fault in Our Stars (2012) turns Cassius around in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Subtitles, then and now
Subtitles used to carry the plot. The first edition of Robinson Crusoe, published in April 1719, had a 68-word title, from The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner to Written by Himself. The habit survived as the "or" subtitle of Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851). Today the subtitle mostly belongs to nonfiction, where it names the reader and the result.
Book title conventions by genre
Readers learn a genre's title habits the way they learn its covers. These are tendencies, not rules: before you decide, look at your comp titles, the last two years of bestsellers in your exact subgenre, and the list of book genres if you're not sure which shelf you're on.
| Genre | What titles tend to do | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| GenreThriller and suspense | What titles tend to doShort and ominous: a person in a situation, or a word with a threat in it | ExamplesGone Girl (Gillian Flynn), The Silent Patient (Alex Michaelides) |
| GenreCozy mystery | What titles tend to doA pun on the sleuth's trade or hobby, often with the crime in it | ExamplesChocolate Chip Cookie Murder (Joanne Fluke) |
| GenreRomance | What titles tend to doPlayful phrases about the couple or the setup | ExamplesThe Hating Game (Sally Thorne), Beach Read (Emily Henry) |
| GenreFantasy | What titles tend to doGrand nouns, often “The X of Y” | ExamplesThe Name of the Wind (Patrick Rothfuss), The Way of Kings (Brandon Sanderson) |
| GenreScience fiction | What titles tend to doA concept, a place or a coined word | ExamplesDune (Frank Herbert), Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir) |
| GenreHorror | What titles tend to doOne word or name with dread in it | ExamplesThe Shining, Pet Sematary (Stephen King) |
| GenreLiterary fiction | What titles tend to doAn image or a phrase that gains meaning by the end | ExamplesThe Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) |
| GenreYoung adult | What titles tend to doDirect and high-concept | ExamplesThe Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) |
| GenreMemoir | What titles tend to doA phrase from the life, plus “A Memoir” | ExamplesEducated: A Memoir (Tara Westover) |
| GenrePrescriptive nonfiction | What titles tend to doA short hook, then a subtitle naming the reader and the result | ExamplesAtomic Habits (James Clear) |
How to find your title
- Write the brief
Three lines before any candidates: the genre and subgenre, the reader, and the one thing that makes the book different. Judge every candidate against them, not against your mood that day.
- Mine the manuscript
Reread the draft and list every phrase, object, place, name and line of dialogue that carries weight. Titles hide in the text: Catch-22 names the rule at the center of Heller's novel. For nonfiction, list the words readers use for their problem.
- Write a first round of candidates
One or two in each type from the table above, bad ones included. If the shortlist that comes out of it is weak, write a second round. The first few are usually the obvious ones, and obvious titles are often already in use.
- Cut to five
Strike anything that fails the brief, needs explaining or trips your tongue. Sleep on the rest and keep the ones you remember in the morning.
- Search for duplicates
Look up each finalist in a large online bookstore, Goodreads, the Library of Congress catalog and WorldCat. An old book in another genre with the same title is usually no problem. A recent one in your genre, or a famous one in any genre, is worth avoiding.
- Test on readers
Read the five aloud to people who read the genre and ask what each book would be about and which they would pick up. Then put each on a rough mock cover at phone-thumbnail size. If the words disappear, try a clearer layout or a shorter title and compare the two.
- Write the subtitle
For nonfiction, name the reader and the result in plain words. If you self-publish through Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing, its metadata guidelines, as of November 2026, say the title and subtitle together must be fewer than 200 characters, with no references to sales rank such as "bestselling," no promotions such as "free," no unauthorized references to other authors or titles and no repeated generic keywords.
- Hold it loosely
Treat it as a working title until the book is sold or published. Titles change between markets: Scholastic published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in the US in September 1998 as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Once it's settled, the title goes into your query with the category and word count, as the guide to writing a query letter shows.
The book. An invented suspense novel about a night nurse at a small hospital in Maine who comes to believe a colleague is harming patients, and can't prove it.
Five finalists. Seven to Seven. The Quiet Ward. Night Float. What the Monitors Heard. Lights Out at Bayside.
In this illustrative test. “Seven to Seven” sounds like a workplace comedy. “The Quiet Ward” is the one most remembered the next day, though some hear gothic in it. “Night Float,” a hospital term for overnight coverage, puzzles anyone outside medicine. “What the Monitors Heard” turns to a gray smudge at thumbnail size in the rough layout, and “Lights Out at Bayside” sounds like a cozy.
The pick. The Quiet Ward, with the cover and the tagline carrying the menace. "Night Float" becomes the title of part two.
In this illustration the test doesn't find a perfect title. It finds the one that survives a day in strangers' memories, and it shows which job the cover will have to do.
If the book lives in Strokes, keep a Titles document beside the manuscript and add candidates as they turn up in the draft, with the chapter each came from. To mine the draft, attach the chapters to the Strokes Assistant and ask which phrases could carry a title. When you have a shortlist, Share to Web publishes it as a read-only link you can send to test readers with the two questions above.
Famous books that changed titles
| First title | Published as | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| First titleFirst Impressions | Published asPride and Prejudice (1813) | What happenedAusten wrote the first version in 1796–97 and renamed it when she revised it in 1811–12. In between, a novel by Margaret Holford and a comedy by Horace Smith had used her title. |
| First titleTrimalchio in West Egg, among others | Published asThe Great Gatsby (1925) | What happenedFitzgerald also tried Among Ash Heaps and Millionaires and The High-Bouncing Lover. His editor, Maxwell Perkins, advised against Trimalchio, and by the time Fitzgerald wanted Under the Red, White, and Blue, in March 1925, it was too late. |
| First titleCatch-18 | Published asCatch-22 (1961) | What happenedThe opening chapter appeared as Catch-18 in 1955. Heller's agent asked for a change to avoid confusion with Leon Uris's Mila 18. Catch-11 and Catch-17 clashed with films, and the publisher didn't think 14 was a funny number. |
| First titleThe Last Man in Europe | Published asNineteen Eighty-Four (1949) | What happenedOrwell went back and forth between the two. His publisher, Fredric Warburg, suggested Nineteen Eighty-Four as the more commercial choice. |
| First titleHarry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Published asHarry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (US, 1998) | What happenedScholastic's Arthur Levine thought “philosopher” sounded too archaic for readers. Rowling later said she regretted the change. |
| First titleThe Sun Also Rises | Published asFiesta (UK, 1927) | What happenedJonathan Cape published it in Britain under a new title and without the two epigraphs. |
None of the first four is remembered by the title it was written under. A working title only has to get the book written.
Can you copyright a book title?
No, not in the United States. The US Copyright Office says so plainly in Circular 33, Works Not Protected by Copyright, revised in March 2021:
Words and short phrases, such as names, titles, and slogans, are uncopyrightable because they contain an insufficient amount of authorship. The Office will not register individual words or brief combinations of words, even if the word or short phrase is novel, distinctive, or lends itself to a play on words.
Copyright protects the text of your book, not the words on its cover, so two books can share a title. Jack London published The Road, a first-person account of his years as a tramp, in 1907. Cormac McCarthy published a novel called The Road in 2006.
Two limits are worth knowing. The same circular adds that "under certain circumstances, names, titles, or short phrases may be protectable under federal or state trademark laws." And retailers have their own rules: Kindle Direct Publishing bars unauthorized references to other titles or authors in a book's title.
Common book title mistakes
- Generic words. Shadows, secrets, whispers, echoes: words that could go on any book in the genre do nothing for yours.
- The wrong shelf. A cozy pun on a dark thriller, or a grand fantasy phrase on a quiet family novel.
- Hard to say or spell. An invented word with two apostrophes may suit the world, but nobody can recommend it aloud.
- Lost at thumbnail size. If the words disappear on a phone screen, try a clearer layout or a shorter title, or move part of it into a subtitle, and compare the versions.
- A joke that needs the book. A pun that lands only after chapter twelve means nothing in a bookshop.
- A spoiler. A title that names the twist or the ending.
- A stuffed subtitle. A string of keywords reads as spam, and KDP bans repeated generic keywords anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Can two books have the same title?
Yes. Titles aren't protected by copyright in the US, so the same title can appear on many books, often in different genres. Jack London and Cormac McCarthy both published books called The Road, a century apart. Avoid sharing a title with a recent book in your own genre, though, because readers searching for yours may find the other one first.
How long should a book title be?
There is no fixed limit. Most titles work when they can be said in one breath and read on a phone-sized cover, which usually means a handful of words. If a longer title blurs at thumbnail size, a clearer layout can help as much as cutting. If you self-publish through Amazon KDP, the title and subtitle together must be fewer than 200 characters.
Do publishers change book titles?
Yes. Catch-22 got its new number after Heller's agent asked for a change, Nineteen Eighty-Four took the title its publisher suggested, and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone became the Sorcerer's Stone for its American publisher. If you sign a traditional contract, check what it says about title approval before you grow attached.
How do you write a book title in a sentence?
Italicize it and capitalize it in title case, as in The Great Gatsby. MLA, APA and Chicago all italicize book titles in running text, while the titles of shorter works, such as articles, poems and short stories, go in quotation marks. In handwriting, underlining stands in for italics.
