Working Titlez

Surprisingly few authors have asked me about the Google Settlement, perhaps because most articles about the digital scanning/copyright infringement issues are mind-numbingly written in legalese. I’ve prepared a couple of letters to send to our authors, only to have the status change overnight. While waiting patiently for the “real and final deal”, here’s today’s update from Publishers Weekly.

In a nutshell, some years back, Google started an ambitious plan to scan every single book ever published and making them findable online via key search words. They invited Stephens Press to participate and we agreed, providing copies of our books for scanning. The results of a search offers a small section of a book that includes the search term — a few paragraphs or a page at the most. The search results also offered links to where to buy the book, starting with the publisher. We thought it was a good way to further our reach and help people find our books. We don’t really have any mechanism in place to track a search all the way to a sale, but we’re eternal optimists and assume some books have, in fact, been purchased as the result of a Google search.

The waters got murkier when Google acquired the rights to digitize the holdings of several major libraries, including many out-of-print books. Now it was the libraries giving Google permission to scan these books — but the libraries don’t own the copyrights, just physical copies. Some are out of copyright but others aren’t. It may well require the tracking down heirs and long-defunct publishers in order to acquire permission to scan. Google argues that it is for the greater societal good that these books be made available to the world via their vast, well, vastness.

So you can see the sticky questions that have popped up. Certain entities, including the Authors Guild, took Google to task, and to court. Google agreed to a settlement, but the so-called settlement hasn’t been settled and seems to morph into new complications daily. The Department of Justice ruled on September 18 that the settlement is flawed and all sides need to return to the table.

The issues are complicated and strike at the heart of current copyright law. We can’t very well say no one can help themselves to someone else’s writing without permission except for Google. And what will Google do in the future? Once it “owns” essentially all the books of the land, will it start selling them? On the other hand, should researchers and ordinary folks have access, at least in some limited form, to everything ever written? Weighty questions.  Stay tuned.

By Krissy Hawkins, Stephens Press

When it comes to the world of Amazon—the more the better.

The wonderful children’s author R.L. Stine once said that he had to have a great title for a book before he could write it, or sometimes would write a book simply because he had a great title.

A title often becomes a hub around which your book flourishes, then, once published it provides a sort of magnetism to draw people in.

In the world of Amazon, it’s a smart subtitle for your non-fiction work benefits you immensely. Notice I did not say a ‘good’ or ‘catchy’ subtitle, but rather a smart one.

If the job of your title is to focus your book and attract readers, the job of the subtitle is to make your book ‘findable’. Given Amazon’s search capabilities it is best to include keywords in your subtitle to optimize its chances in search results.

For example, take Aaron Shepard’s book The Business of Writing for Children: An Award-Winning Author’s Tips on Writing Children’s Books and Publishing Them, or How to Write, Publish, and Promote a Book for Kids. Quite a handful, I know, but can you think of a popular search term under the umbrella of writing for children that is not included in that title? Exactly.

And that is why Mr. Shepard’s book will come up among the top results almost every time anyone searches for books on that topic. Such a subtitle may not be much of a paradigm of efficient writing skills, but a thorough subtitle is a good tactic when it comes to visibility on sites such as Amazon, the world’s biggest book retailer.

Your publisher will have the final say on your book’s moniker, but a well-thought out title on the top of your manuscript will earn you props from the acquisitions editor from the get-go. If you need assistance when it comes to selecting keywords check out www.wordtracker.com or www.google.com/insights/search.