Titles are instructive. From the title of this blog post, you might have guessed that it would have something to do with titles. But I’m not actually going to talk about what you might expect. I want to talk about the names we use for books internally.
When a manuscript first comes in, it almost never has the title that will be the book’s final title. But in any case, editors and designers can be a little lazy. When we’re talking about or writing about a book-in-progress, we want something short and to the point. This results in many of our books having “nicknames.” Below I’ve listed some of the titles we used in-house when talking about books. Underneath each one is a cover image showing the book’s actual title.
Fractions
SCWS
Larvae
Miss Pell
Colors [or Ruby]
Annie [or Annie Walks Out]
bookkm
I actually think “Annie Walks Out” is a better title than “Annie Shapiro and the Clothing Workers' Strike”. I guess there's no chance of changing the title, is there?
Carol Hinz
Thanks for your feedback! That particular book has been out for a year, so it would be tough to change the title at this point. I think some people prefer titles that are searchable and tell the reader about the specific content of the book and others prefer less informative but more evocative titles. Depending on the book, I tend to waver between those two points of view.