They tell us to never judge a book by its cover, that it's what on the inside that counts. But the truth is covers are what catch our attention at the bookstore (or on amazon). Besides covers the other largely important part of selling books that no one really talks about are titles and marketing.
Titles are one of the first things you notice about a book. They're your first glimpse into what the book can be about. Titles can be either attention grabbing or they can reflect the theme of the book. For example I recently saw a book in Barnes and Noble titled "What the F**k Did I just Read?" I'd never heard of the book but the title caught my attention and I almost bought it (unfortunately for the book I was on a budget and was there to pick up a book I already had in mind). Even though I didn't buy the book the title was interesting enough that I had to check it out and I'm still thinking about it.
The book "Speak" by Laurie Halse Anderson's title is simple but perfectly captures the theme of the overall book. In the book a young girl about to enter high school is sexually assaulted at a party and is isolated from her friends because she called the police shortly after getting assaulted and everyone turns against her for ruining the party. The main character doesn't tell anyone what happened and is silent most of the time. But eventually she learns to speak up and tell everyone what happened, so the simple title is very fitting.
Then there are cases where titles can be misleading and it's annoying. I was in a creative writing workshop one time where I was completely mislead by the title of someone's short story and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how the title connected to the overall story. Now I understand good titles are often hard to come up with and the writer was working with a deadline for a class. I'm just using this as an example to show that when it comes to titles, writers should take the time to really think about their titles. You want your titles to make sense so that the reader doesn't feel like they were lied to in some way.
Book marketing is another thing to be aware of and can either be really helpful or misleading. In my personal experience with book marketing, I find that more often than not publishers want to market what sells. They'll take one aspect of a novel and just focus on that one thing in order to sell it to readers, even if that one aspect isn't what the story's really about.
For example, when Hamid's book "Exit West" came out a few years ago, I remember it was being marketed as a love story. Then when I actually read the book I quickly realized that wasn't the case. The romantic relationship between Saeed and Nadia is important to the story, but it feels like a secondary plot next to the big actual overarching plot, which is a refugee story.
"The Hunger Games" was also a bit mismarketed, at least when the movies were coming out. I remember seeing everyone talk about the love triangle between Katniss, Peeta and Gale and everyone anticipated who Katniss will choose in the end. It's like the marketing department forgot about the themes of oppression, unfair class system and the government that was literally killing children in a death match once a year. Even in the books those things were more important for Katniss to focus on, she barely thought about her love life. So it's interesting that the marketing department chose to focus on a love triangle that's a B or C plot in the books.
Titles and marketing are important for books. While the content inside the pages are most important, good titles and a strong marketing team can help a book's success, so they should always line up with the content in the book and never mislead the readers.
