So, I am co-authoring a book. My co-author and I are having a disagreement on our title. We have had a book title in place for nearly four years and never really talked about changing it. However, recently my co-author has made a suggestion to change the title. She is very adamant about changing it, however, I want to keep it the same. Here are both view points on the two titles. "An Age of Darkness". and "The Time Bender." Please give opinions on which title you think is better. Title option 1. "An Age of Darkness" Starting out, At the start of the novel, Jayden is going through severe depression over losing his best friend, Skye. Which, is the first real look at the Age of Darkness that is consuming his life. The book continues with him running away from home, losing his arm, and being told about his destiny to kill The Black Knight(Valadia.) This is yet another example of how a new age is formed by Valadia to end him and the children of light. Hense "An Age of Darkness." This is the start of the new age. That's the main reason why I feel it ties with the book well. The title isn't meant to be an ending, but more of a start for the Age of Darkness that will follow the children of light throughout the series. The only other reason I believe the title should be in this first book is that it is an overall great title to bring people in for the first book of the series. I believe that books should be structured, however, "An Age of Darkness" contrasts nicely to the second book "The Void Walker" and I don't see any problem with differing titles. Title option 2. "The Time Bender" Starting out, I believe the title "An Age of Darkness" is too epic for a first book. "The Time Bender" is much simpler and easy to build upon. Secondly, I think that because this is a book series, It needs to be more structured and organized. "The Time Bender" would flow nicely into the second book called "The Void Walker." "An Age of Darkness" sounds like a finishing book in a series, and would be quite hard to build upon in following books, if it is the first title. My main worry is that we won’t be able to build on that and make the next title something more epic and fancy. “The Time Bender” isn’t as enticing, but it’s something you can build on fairly easily. “An Age of Darkness” is something you can easily build up to, because it feels finale-ish.
What are their thoughts, and why don't you talk to them? It seems there is a clash of creative differences here, and no one but you two can solve this problem.
I have talked to them and we have come to a standstill where neither one of us wants to budge, so they suggested making a poll on here to see what people thought and to hopefully get opinions from more experienced writers.
'The time bender' already exists as a fantasy book title (Keith Laumer) , mind you so does " Age of Darkness" (WH40K ) tbh I'm not that sold on either of them .. may be see if you can find a third option that you both like (bearing in mind that in a trad deal the publisher will also have a say) also I'd say not being able to agree on the title doesn't bode well for the collaboration
I do agree with you on possibly changing it to a third title, however, no matter how hard you try, there will always be a piece of writing using the title we come up with. So, the title being similar to another piece of writing doesn't concern me. Thanks for the feedback!
it will however definitely concern an agent/publisher if the piece of writing is similar in nature to yours ... e.g It would not be problem t write a book called Old mans war if it was about an Old mans experiences in the Civil war, but writing a Sci Fi with that title would be a non starter. Apart from the whole can you get it published angle there's also the fact that if there is a better known book with the same title readers searching for yours will find it by accident (and if its similar in genre you'll lose sales) That aside the other problem with "The Time bender" is that its not clear from the blurb how it relates to the story. I'm not sure how far on in the writing process you are (after 4 years I guess you've nearly finished) but one other option is to park the title debate until the book is finished and edited (see if the editor has any bright ideas), and see if anything from the text suggests itself. I changed the title of my first novel twice, and the working title of my second book has changed three times so far
An Age of Darkness sounds very, very generic, I'm sorry to say. Between the two titles, I'd go for Time Bender hands down. But neither are particularly enticing. Age of Darkness being the worse of the two, by far. If you're really so attached to "Age of Darkness" and it does seem it ties well with the overarching plot/theme, how about making it into the series title? It seems odd to me that you cannot have The Age of Darkness: Time Bender. You know, like Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Or His Dark Materials: The Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. Or like Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban etc. It's ok to have a unifying title for a series, and then have individual titles for each book. I'd move away from Age of Darkness, if I were you. Being too generic is never a good thing. It means no one will ever be able to find your book on google search or Amazon because a million other books will come up first.
But please stop there. I know I've mentioned this before, in other contexts, but when I can't tell what the title of the book is because there are like five different things on the cover that might be the title, not including the author's name, the confusion is off-putting. I mean, what are the chances of a cogent story if the title is a grab-bag? See here for examples: http://lousybookcovers.tumblr.com/tagged/actual-title-please
I think you're asking the wrong question of the wrong people. It's almost irrelevant how the title relates to the story. What's important is if the title makes a reader pick up your book in the first place. Personally, The Time Bender sounds far more enticing to me than An Age of Darkness, mostly because it suggests a specific character with interesting powers rather than an overarching world or setting or tone - I'm much more interested in characters than settings. But I don't read this kind of thing, so the chances of me buying the book are pretty much zero no matter what it's called. You need to be asking readers (not writers) of this genre which title is more appealing to them. Twitter and Goodreads would both be good places for that poll.
Except that if the title makes the reader pick up the book with expectations that are not delivered that spells bad reviews. I agree on the latter point
Unlucky Dip with that cover made me laugh out loud the implications! To be fair, that'd only happen if you were self-published with no quality control, which seems to be all the cases from that link lol. I'm guessing the OP wants to go the trad route?
Thanks for the feedback! I agree with you in saying that there should be a series name(We do have one). I disagree with "An Age of Darkness" being generic is a problem. Many books that I would say have extremely generic names, such as: The Northern Lights, or The Lost Hero, have proven to be very popular among readers. It's a debatable topic, however to us, these are boring titles, to most readers, they aren't at all. "The Time Bender" is also a great title and I am still trying to decide.
Not necessarily. Only in the case of fringe instances like, for instance, "BOOK ABOUT HOT NAKED LADIES" turns out to just be Bible verses. A book being called something kind of generic like "Age of Darkness" and then not being about a literal age of darkness isn't going to upset anyone.
I would suggest adding "Something else" to the poll. Neither of those titles engage me. The Time Bender is fractionally more interesting, but it distracts me because it makes me think there's another book by that name. Age of Darkness makes me quite sure there's at least one more book by that name, because it's such a bland and common phrase. I don't really agree that you can't find a title that isn't already used. As mentioned earlier in the thread, how many book are named, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? I'm mostly guessing just the one. Murder on the Orient Express? An Episode of Sparrows? In This House of Brede? Arabella of Mars? The Andromeda Strain? I'll be a bit startled if you find me more than one of any of these.
It's definitely important to pull in readers with a good title but you are just wrong about the title being irrelevant to how it relates to the story. If your title has nothing to do with the story, then what is the point in having a title? I appreciate your opinion on the matter but saying the title has no importance in relation to the story is wrong.
Going from his response to me higher up in the thread, I have a feeling generic might be exactly what he's going for? (I'm being genuine, not sarcastic lol)
I want the title to be unique, but retain the core of the story. I feel like overall, I need to start on a third title.
You can't (after 15 minutes) if you're a new member - after 20 posts and two weeks that goes away and you can edit your own posts (Its nothing personal its an anti spam thing) If you ask one of the mods nicely (hit the report button below) thy might edit it for you depending what you want to do
Well, a branding tool, at least. I guess it goes into marketing philosophy when it comes to whether or not a title that matches the book's contents is a good, bad or neutral thing.
Well the title should give at least some clue as to what the reader should expect. Not going to go for a book titled Zombie Massacre on Venus, and the blurb tells me it is the memoirs of a loser and his home videos of shit his cat does to a roomba. So in fact a title should be related in some way to the story in some fashion or another.
