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We’re following up yesterday’s post with an examination of my own title experience, which right now, has been two books.
As some of you know, the original title of Secret Society Girl, as reported in Publisher’s Lunch, was Confessions of a (Secret) Society Girl.
Early in the editorial process, “Confessions” was nixed because there was a bit of a glut of confessional titles on the marketplace at that time. We also lost the parentheses, because they were durn confusin’ and would screw up the alphabetical listings in the card catalogs and computer systems. It would never do for my book to be listed under ( rather than under S. So now we were dealing with the title Secret Society Girl. (As it is, there was one chain of bookstores which had my book erroneously listed as Ssecret Scoiiety Girl, by Diana Petefrreund, and I’m so not kidding about that.)
Now, the trend in modern publishing is to append the words “a novel” to any work of mainstream novel-length fiction. This, apparently, is to warn the reader that the book is a work of fiction, and not a memoir, or a cookbook, or a biography, or a self-help guide. Seriously, most hardcover releases have this baby slapped on. Cell: A Novel. The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel, Brother Odd: A Novel.
I’m not necessarily a fan of this trend, but I am a fan of clarity. I’m also a fan of the classic literary subtitle, a’la Vanity Fair’s “A Novel Without a Hero” or Clarissa’s “A History of a Young Lady” (which, to be fair, Richardson, is actually a novel of the history of a young lady, but whatever…). When my editor suggested the appendage of “An Ivy League Novel” I thought it had a touch of the Thackeraean descriptor about it, since the book is not just about a girl in a secret society, but a girl in an Ivy League secret society, and about her life in college in general. She’s not a Mason or anything. She’s in a college society. (Though really, I wait patiently for the day when the muse shall deliver unto me a subtitle on the level of “The Modern Prometheus.”)
And I’m sure someone has already come up with this, but is there a book out there called “A Novel: A Novel?” Or, better yet: “A Novel: A Critical Examination of the Need for Superfluous Subtitles in Modern Fiction?” Call my agent.
And, while mainstream fiction loves “a novel,” genre fiction loves series branding. The new trend in genre fiction is for series to be called out using a descriptor followed by “novel.” You most often see this in the world of paranormal romance: Light My Fire: An Aisling Grey, Guardian, Novel, If Angels Burn: A Novel of the Darkyn, Rebel Ice: A Stardoc Novel. So, on occasion, readers have mixed up these two types of subtitles and thought that my series is called “Ivy League.” It’s not. It’s the Secret Society Girl series. In the inside back cover of the first book, it says “Bantam Dell will publish the second book in the Secret Society Girl series in 2007.” In the inside cover of the second book it says, “Look for the first book of the Secret Society Girl series:” and then has a picture of the paperback cover of SSG.
So that’s how we got the title for the first book.
When I first sold the books, the second book in the series was described in the pitch as Chronicles of a Secret Society Girl. Which now, looking back on it, I think sounds so much like the first one that people would have been very confused and the whole thing would have been A Bad Idea. Anyway, obviously, once we dropped “confessions,” “chronicles” went the way of the dodo. When I turned in the proposal, (though I joked about calling it Secret Society Girl Gets Laid) I called it Secret Society Girl Sub Rosa.
“Sub Rosa,” some may note, means “Under the Rose.” It’s a Latin term that harkens back to any number of legends from classic mythology to Roman dinner parties to early Christian meetings underground, and medieval secret societies. In fact, it is postulated that the Rosacrucians (i.e., knights of the rosy cross) adopted that symbol not because of any weird rose/female/Mary Magdalene imagery as hypothesized by Dan Brown et al., but rather, because of their propensity for meeting “sub rosa.” Basically, it’s an old fashioned way of “keeping it on the down low.”
Apparently, populations speaking Latin not being what they once were, everyone felt it best my titles were in English. Classics majors everywhere felt my pain. But “Under the Rose” is more unwieldy than simply “Sub Rosa,” plus it doesn’t have that great sibillance to match with SSG, so we dropped the SSG and stuck with the three word title of Under the Rose.
So here we are. I love the title. I think it’s perfect, for people who have read the first book, and thus will get the Rose imagery, for people who haven’t read the first book, but think the title has a certain ring to it, and most importantly of all (this is my main thing for titles) for people to think while they are reading the book. Plus it meant we got to put a rocking rose on the back cover.
The only downside is that the acronym UTR is not as aesthetically pleasing as SSG. It sounds, perhaps, like an illness, or maybe The Utne Reader.
The titles of my unpublished novels rocked hard. So hard in fact, that three of them have recently been used in published novels of the same genre. Yes, I did have that momentary twinge of, “Hey! Mine!” but mostly, I’m just pleased as punch that other people thought the titles were as good as I thought they were.
I thought this might be a fun time to discuss the way that titles work in books. Titles are, for the writer, at once extremely important and extremely unimportant. The former because the right title is, like everything else about your submission package, a marketing tool. You want to pick a title that says, “read me,” “buy me” “love me” to the agent or editor. You want it to be hip and sexy and say something profound or cute or funny about your voice and tone and story.
At the same time, titles are pretty unimportant, by which I mean, don’t get your heart set on them, because they almost always change. This is often for those same marketing reasons. What is really sexy and hip and desirable to an acquisitions team may not be the same to the general reading public. For instance, you may turn in a book with a title that is too similar to another book coming out, or another book that is out, or etc., and though it worked really well during the submission process, when there was no other book that could be confused with your book, once you’re looking at something on the marketplace, with thousands of other books around it, it might not have the same panache.
A friend of mine sold a thriller with what I thought was a remarkably goofy title. Her book was sassy and sexy and action-packed, but every time I saw the title, I couldn’t help thinking of a certain bumbling, stuttering comedian. I rejoiced when the title was changed during the editorial process into something that better reflected the story. I can’t picture the book titled anything else. Another writer I know sold a series with a title that is a play on another popular series (think Gary Trotter). She was asked to change the title because the first series’s publisher thinks the two titles are too close.
Publishing houses and their marketing departments know how important a title can be for buy-ins and for simple shelf-appeal. How many of you have picked up a book based on an intriguing title?
Friends who write primarily for category romance lines don’t sweat titles at all. They turn in books with titles like “Contracted romance #2″ or “Bill and Jane’s story.” This is because most category romances are retitled anyway to highly branded codewords like cowboy, millionaire, secret baby, mistress, tycoon, prince, Greek, bride, marriage, engagement, etc. (There are some lines (like Harlequin Blaze) which don’t go for those kind of titles, but instead for highly sexualized puns. But most do go for the branding.) This is so readers of category romances know instantly whether a book has their favorite plotline or characters. Some category readers go for the sheik books, or the cowboy books, or hte marriage of convenience books, or the secret baby books. the snappy titles are less important here than they are in single title romance or mainstream, becuase most category readers are very line loyal. They know what their favorite category romance line is and will buy it regardless of title, storyline, or writer. It’s one of the perks of being a newbie in category land. You have the power of the brand behind you.
But for the rest of us, titles are vital. Not so long ago, I changed the title of one of my new projects. I was describing the story to a fellow writer and then started whining about how my agent had suggested a title change. He asked what the original title was; when I told him, he said, “Your story sounds great, but I’d never read a book with that old title.” A writer friend of mine had a tough time getting her agent to even look at her proposal until she gave it a new title. And don’t think editors don’t make decisions like that as well!
Editors think just like everyone else. When you are in a bookstore, examining the masses of new books on offer, your eye will be drawn to titles that intrigue you. You may never have heard of the author or the book, but if the title is interesting, you might pick it up, flip it over and read the back, check out a few pages in the first chapter. The point is to get the book in the reader’s hands. It’s the same thing as having a good cover.
Now imagine you’re an editor. You have a stack of books to read and one train ride home. So you grab one or two. Wouldn’t you be more likely to grab the one which has the really cool title? Yes, you know, academically, that some books are going to be great but have crappy titles, just as the bookstore patron knows that great books often have crappy covers. But you aren’t thinking anything like that when you are on your way home. You’re thinking, “That sounds cool. Let me give it a whirl.”
This post was inspired by a contest I just judged. Most entries had the most lackluster, generic titles imaginable. I judged one entry last because every time I picked it up, that title stared at me fro the first page, and I yawned. I couldn’t help it. But when I finally read it, it was the best entry in the lot, and I gave it a nearly perfect score. It was thrilling, well-executed, suspenseful, poignant, amusing. Good thing I was assigned to read it. What if I’d been an editor who could get away with reading a line or two before rubber stamping it? What if I’d been a reader who never would have picked up the book in the first place?
Don’t you want the first impression of your book to be a good one?
Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the development of the titles for my books.
I think I’m finally getting over that cold. I don’t feel quite as crappy as I have for the last week or so. Nose less stuffed, too. Cough still hanging on.
Minor annoyance: Every time I log in here, Blogger says they are ready to switch me to Beta. But when I click on it, they’re all “never mind, your blog is too big.” So then why do they keep inviting me?
So, as I announced earlier, I went to Handel’s Messiah this weekend (first thing I learned, it’s “Messiah” not “The Messiah.”) And let me just say, that in a perfect world, seats with obstructed views would be marked as such and priced as such. I can’t tell you how bitter I am at the idea that you’d pay the exact same price for a seat directly behind a big stone column as someone else paid for a seat with a gorgeous sweeping view of the whole cathedral. So the three of us get up there and the whole balcony is empty, and they shove us into our seats behind this column. About ten minutes pass of us staring at stone six inches from our faces. Then we realize that EVERYONE who has shown up has been shown to similar seats. The middle section is completely empty, and we’re all sitting in these little alcoves ringing the balcony behind columns. How odd is that, that we all showed up early and just happened ot be assigned the sucky seats? Everyone in the sucky obstructed view seats start looking at the big empty space in the middle.
Well, I bet you can guess what happened. Turned into a total free for all. And no, the irony of this in a cathedral while watching a performance about the life of the Prince of Peace is not lost on me. I guess I’m going to hell. I’m also pretty sure that our assigned seats were the worst seats in the section, because they’re the ones that remained empty for the longest, and when three people showed up fifteen minutes after the start of the performance and were seated there, they complained loudly into intermission about how unfair it was that they didn’t get the seats they paid for. Tell me about it! (They either left at intermission to find other seats or left altogether.)
This is my public urging to the National Cathedral to mark obstructed seats as obstructed and not charge the same for them. I noticed that there were also obstructed seats in the gallery ($60) and that a few of these had television screens set up so that the people staring at the stone columns could at least see a video image of the singers.
It was a lovely performance. But it was freezing, and, as I said, I still wasn’t at the top of my game. The soprano was especially lovely. I’d been told it was a sing along, but I didn’t hear anyone singing, and I think I would have been shocked if anyone tried to. The show is mostly operatic recitations and a few arias. How do you sing along to that? Maybe they sing to the choruses?
Sunday afternoon I went to the Washington Revels. I’d never been before but wow, it was amazing! The theme this year was Americana, so there were Shaker hymns and Moravian carols, and Pennsylvania Dutch storytelling and Indian myths. Loved it. They did a lot of shape-note signing, which I first heard of at my friend Dorothy Fortenberry’s play, Burned Over. But this was the first time I’d had a chance to sit in the middle of the “hollow square” and listen to shape note singing in the round. Gorgeous. Really stunning.
I think I need to go to more performances and museums in the coming year. More art in my life. That’s a new year’s resolution.
Late last night, Sailor Boy took a break from his studies and we watched Shampoo, which, along with The Music Man, Dog Day Afternoon, and disc one of season two of Joan of Arcadia, forms our current Netflix selections (yes, we have eclectic taste). Aside from coveting Julie Christie’s wardrobe and recognizing Carrie Fisher by voice alone (I can’t believe this movie was only two years before Star Wars, because she looks so young!), the main thing I got out of the
film was that the main character was a total hottie player named George. Love it! And here I thought I was the first person to use that name for a lothario character. Too funny.
Also, SB and I were debating about how many people he slept with that day. I say it was the wife at the beginning, then Goldie Hawn, then the close call with Julie Christie, then Carrie Fisher, then the wife again, then the two twin chicks in the jacuzzi at the party, and then Julie Christie. He says the jacuzzi twins didn’t happen, but he wanted to know what was going on with the girl whose hair he was blow-drying while she had her face in his crotch.
Yep, so that was my weekend. Two artsy performances and then a seventies farce about 60s sexual mores.
I realize that it’s been a while since I’ve done a writing craft or industry post. This is because, over the last few months, I’ve been feeling a growing sense of cynicism about whether such posts serve any real purpose. This is a combination, I suppose, of three things:
1) the sense that I’m preaching to the choir (i.e., anyone who really has an interest in improving their writing career and researching the industry is already reading blogs like mine and the many, many well-run industry blogs out there, they already have TNH’s Slushkiller entry bookmarked, they visit Miss Snark daily with their saltshaker in hand, they understand exactly what an agent’s job is (and that it’s not just to sell a book to a publisher), they know what a scam agent is, they do not think of agents as evil gatekeepers…).
2) I keep getting the impression that a bunch of people simply want me and everyone like me to shut the fuck up, since we’re published and therefore, it’s “easy” for us to say that a particular agent is a bad idea, or a particular self-publishing model won’t work and here’s why, or that in general, the reason we’re so skeptical about whatever fool thing they’re trying is because we’re jealous and elite and we want to keep the riff raff out. Please. Have we met? I *so* want the riff raff in. I love me some riff raff. (And let’s not even get into the ridiculous debate about all the stuff that’s supposed to be “easy” for published writers and is not at all. Again with the preaching to the choir, but getting published is like levelling up on a video game.
You’re the same character as you were before when you were at the top of the last level, you’re just playing in a much much harder field that requires skills and weaponry you haven’t earned yet.
3) Sometimes people are listening without listening. “Scam agents suck,” they agree, while writing out their checks. “No agent is better than a bad agent,” they say, nodding emphatically, while justifying the fact that their agent won’t return their calls, forward their rejection letters, or whatever other sketchy behavior is going on. Which is frustrating.
Updated to add: I just thought of a fourth reason, thanks to Robin. I think I’ve already talked about everything I can talk about — publishers, genre, myths, misconceptions, bad advice, good advice gone bad, you name it. And if I haven’t, someone else has, and often better than I can. The journalist in me likes to break the new stories. 
So, am I a glutton for punishment or what? Because I keep pressing forward, posting things, glad whenever someone tells me that something I said helped them.
Horrific Cold-From-Hell: Still hanging in there.
Wedding Dress: Still in love.
Sailor Boy: Still the combo of infuriating and lovable I fell for.
Gorgeous Photograph of Water Reflecting into a Canyon in Israel, Matted and Framed: Mine, because when you let this girl near an auction, her bloodthirsty competitive streak comes out.
Snow: Falling. Dammit.
The Three Tickets to Handel’s Messiah At The National Cathedral I Ordered At Thanksgiving: Still not in my hand, and boy will the nice people at the Will Call be getting an earful about it this evening when I go to demand my seats!
Xmas Presents Bought: 3 down, too many to count to go.
Xmas Cards Received: 1. Thank you, Annie! A cute picture of Bilbo of my very own!
SSG3 (still untitled, but may I have a feeling Secret Society Girl on Spring Break probably won’t cut it): On hold until my brain starts working again.
SSG2 (a.k.a. Under the Rose): Copy edits winging their way to me soon soon soon.
Received the most lovely note from my copyeditor, Pam, about how much she enjoyed SSG. Awwww… Thanks! (I can see all the CEs I know read this blog — Marathon Girl, I’m talking to you– getting misty-eyed.) Now I feel bad about all the verbal gymnastics Amy indulges in. I’m sure it’s easier to work on novels without biphasic lists, tables, and our dear Miss Haskel’s fondness for creating portmanteaus.
Okay, I’m off to bed and hope this cold clears up a bit by tomorrow, because me + AlkaSeltzer Plus Cold + 3 Hours of “Hallelujah”+ warm seats may = Zzzzzz. That is, if we can a) find parking and b) claim our seats.
Ugh. I’m sick. Big honking head cold, which has not been helped along by the plane flight AT ALL. So that’s why I haven’t been blogging. And I’m looking around my apartment, which is an unholy disaster, and which Sailor Boy reports he actually let people into while I was away… clearly, I can never show my face in public again.
I bought a wedding dress. Yay! I even had that whole “this is it” moment when I put it on. Now I’m hoping I don’t have second thoughts (about the dress! about the dress!) over the next eleven months. It does not help that the pictures I took of myself in the dress are not particularly flattering.
So Ally Carter is canvassing for favorite lines and scenes from her book, and since I’m sick, and being self-indulgent, I thought I’d do the same. What is your favorite line and/or scene in Secret Society Girl? I’ll start. The line I still giggle about, over a year later, is:
“Is Conde Nast a Digger?”
“I don’t think Conde Nast is even a person.”
And my favorite scene is a toss-up between the scene when Amy comes back to the library after talking to Malcolm and runs into Clarissa, and the scene with Amy and Brandon after Amy comes home from the bar.
What are yours?
Wow, have I been delinquent recently. I leave town and forget to blog. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, I did in fact, leave town, and have been very busy running around the gulf coast of Florida. Also, I’ve been working really hard on my new proposal. And finally, I have this killer cold and I’ve been sleeping a lot in preparation for infecting all the people who are stuck on the flight with me back to DC. (Sorry in advance, but if it makes you feel better, I probably infected the people on the flight down, too, I just didn’t know it.)
A few things that have managed to bug the hell out of me recently:
That it takes half an hour to install scanner drivers on a desktop running MS. Plug and Play, baby, plug. and. play.
Rewriting the lyrics to my favorite non-religious Christmas carol to be all about religion, and not even doing a good rhyming and rhythmic job of it to boot (hint: “king” does not rhyme with “here”). And then playing the new, perverted version CONSTANTLY.
People who say things like “The Bay Area” and mean “The San Francisco Bay Area” when they are not anywhere near San Francisco. (Especially egregious when they *are in* the Tampa Bay Area.) This is similar to the people at Yale who would say “The City” as if there was only one. Where do you live? Ancient Rome? (May have made sense to you growing up on Long Island with your dad working on Wall Street, but the rest of us were just scratching our heads. )
That 98% of the wedding dresses on the market look like a series of indistinguishable, people sized inverted funnels. So far, I’ve determined that of the remaining two percent, half look like lingerie and the other half cost more than my car.
I haven’t been tagged in a good long time. I’m so excited! Thank you, Susan!
1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? I’m going to go with hot chocolate, since I usually love one eggnog per year, but hot chocolate is forever.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? What nonsense is this? Wrapped of course! Unless it’s a bike.
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Nothing on the house, but colored twinkle lights on the tree. And they have to be twinkle, not blinking. And they have to use real red lights, not this new pinkish red nonsense.
4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. I don’t have to beg for kisses.
5. When do you put your decorations up? This year, we aren’t, since we’re going to Florida for Christmas. My mom put hers up last weekend, and they’re totally gorgeous, and fortuantely, unbreakable, for my new little niece and nephew that, um, like to climb trees, paw at things and, uh, stretch their claws.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? One that I’ll never have again. there used to be a baker at our local Publix who made the best poppyseed roll on the planet. I’m not even kidding. My mom used to order about 50 rolls every year and put them in the freezer and we’d eat them for months. I’m so glad we didn’t have random drug tests in the fifth grade, because the entire household would probably have tested positive for opium. I remember how we used to think our teeth would turn black from all that poppyseed. Then he retired, and if I remember correctly, my mom tried to bribe the store into giving her his phone number so we could wrangle the recipe out of him or hire him privately or something, but to no avail. And no one makes poppyseed rolls like that guy. So many of our family and friends, knowing our affinity, have tried to give us other poppyseed rolls, or find us new recipes, but nothing has been the same.
7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: My father usually had to work on Christmas morning, and because of the design of our house, we couldn’t leave our bedrooms without seeing the tree. So my mom devised this way to keep us occupied and in our bedrooms until my dad came home. We had, in addition to our stockings, these bags that would be hung on our doorknobs, and filled with a book or a game or something to play with. My brothers and I always spent a few hours playing games together first thing Christmas morning. When we remodeled the house, it was no longer necessary, but we still wanted our bags!
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Diana’s mental health advisors have instructed her not to look at this question, as it brings back traumatic memories.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Huh? Why? People do that?
10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? First I put on the lights. then I start with the big ornaments, then the smaller ones to fill in gaps. Angel goes last. (I’m not sure I answered this right.)
11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? I’m from Florida. Snow is the harbinger of hell.
12. Can you ice skate? Yes, but not like Brian Boytano or anything. I actually love skating of all types — roller, rollerblade, ice…
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? I remember several favorite gifts. Several dolls, a magic kit, lots of books that I remember adoring and count among my favorites to this day, a bike, skates, some clothes that I loved, a set of knives, the trampoline we all got one year… Santa must think I’m a good girl.
14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? Family. I love my family.
15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Sniff. Poppyseed. Now that’s gone, Xmas cookies, but I don’t think mom makes them anymore.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? The bags. I guess it was always special because it was ours — no one else had it. Also, I love watching old holiday movies with the family. A Christmas Story, Holiday Inn, Scrooged, Scrooge, about ten other versions of A Christmas Carrol, The Bishop’s Wife, It’s a Wonderful Life... has anyone else seen that old movie about Santa Claus starring John Lithgow and Dudley Moore as an elf? And also, when I was young I sued to make a treasure hunt for my brothers to find their presents every year. that was a lot of fun. Finally, always reading the book I get for Xmas on Xmas afternoon, on the couch in my living room, with the fire crackling and the tree twinkling and Xmas music on.
17. What tops your tree? My parents have an angel. Last year, SB and I used an aluminum foil star because we didn’t have a tree topper.
18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I think I’m supposed to say “giving” here, right? I love giving the most when I get it right, like with the treasure hunt. But there’s so much pressure. I never know if it’s what the person really wants. My mom has set an especially high bar. She’s REALLY good at finding presents. She also really drummed into us the whole “thought that counts” thing, so I think we’re pretty good at receiving –we love everything. So maybe I should go easier on myself about the giving, figuring that most people are like me and just love getting presents. But I do get stressed out about finding “the perfect gift.”
19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? Oh, that’s a tough one. Silver Bells, probably. Or Carol of the Bells. Or the Chestnuts one. Or We Three Kings. Or Good King Wenceslas, or I Saw Three Ships. Or… (I know, I know, I can go on like this all night.) Actually, one I always loved but not many people outside my family know is called My Christmas Tree is Hung With Tears, and it’s kind of jazz/blues meets Miss Havisham. Seriously.
20. Candy Canes? Mmmmmm…. Love ‘em. Big ones, little ones, flavored ones, ones on those little strings of plastic baggies, ones in non-cane shapes, the starburst-flavored ones, stirring the end of it in hot choclate to make it peppermint hot choclate. Yeah, I love em.
Who should I tag? I think… Carrie, who needs to get her minds off things, and Colleen, who needs to take a break from fondling her brand new book.
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