Newsletter #68 — Book Titles
October 15, 2023
Newsletter #68 — Book Titles
Exit Velocity Title — I've been posting small tidbits of information about Exit Velocity on Facebook for many months now, and slowly people are becoming aware that this is the title of my to-be-published novel. A few are saying, "Oh, it's a baseball novel" — even though I've stated several times that it is not a baseball novel.
I can see why they think that. The term exit velocity has become a term associated with baseball. And, I've written several baseball books. Ergo: it's a baseball book.
Because of their reactions, and because titles are of critical importance, I wondered if maybe I had given the book the wrong title, and I considered doing an A-B title test on social media. I brainstormed and came up with 150 other titles. (yes, brainstorming requires rapid throwing out of ideas, rejecting none of them in the first round.) Of the 150 I liked Stormy Whether the best.
But I ran a list of the top ten titles past BookBaby editors and they all preferred Exit Velocity and thought of it as a sort-of science fiction title. Their second choice was Stormy Whether, which I found an interesting coincidence (they and I both liked it), but their 100% first choice was Exit Velocity. And — they all saw a summary of what the book is about, so I trust they were choosing the title with the content in mind.
Anyway, this reminded me that before baseball took over the words exit velocity, the words used to conjure up rockets and spaceships. So I'm sticking to Exit Velocity. The words "a novel" will appear below the title, though. Can't have a numbers-and-stats-obsessed person buying the book and being disappointed that it's fiction!
Formatted Manuscript — The formatted manuscript arrived on October 2 and my immediate impression was that it was beautiful. Lovely typeface, open spaces, and the pages came out to 384, not 429 like BookBaby initially projected. That's good!
After ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the manuscript, I then had to read it one more time. Luckily I had help: a volunteer who had never read the manuscript before. I hope that the two of us caught every hidden error!
Testimonials — Knowing that it's a good thing to have testimonials on the back cover of a book, I made a list of respected people in several different areas, all of which relate to Exit Velocity. I have Writers; Union Builders; Socialists; Science-Fiction Writers; Celebrities; and Women's Rights Leaders. The list comes to 21 people
As I waited for BookBaby to format my manuscript, I composed a draft letter to each of these individuals, so that when I have the corrected manuscript in PDF form, I'll be ready to go. When I say "ready to go" I'm not counting the time it will take me to hunt down email addresses for each of these people. This, I suspect, will take a Very. Long. Time. Indeed.
Much longer than it did when I asked for testimonials for Jack and Larry, the results of which are in the accompanying photo.
What Oh What To Write Next — I hope you enjoy this blog, in which I agonize over what to write next.