Congratulations! You have written your book! That was a major achievement. Your next step will no doubt be to list your title with various website services to increase its exposure. You will be filling out forms with questions you may have never thought about before. Some guidelines about what to include would be beneficial about now. Here’s a list of best practices for formatting your title on the web:
1. Use mixed case for capitalizing your title, unless there is an acronym involved. For example, The Ocean at the End of the Lane would have mixed case but SEAL Team Six would have the acronym in all capital letters.
2. If you have a subtitle you intend to use within your title you can search for that separate field on the submissions form or use a colon to separate it from the title. (A subtitle can be described as the second level of the title. It is usually a further explanation of the title as with Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.)
3. Spell out numbers if they appear as the first word of a title (for example, Seven Deadly Sins).
4. Make sure that the other versions (formats) of the book have the same title so that these can all be linked and searchable on the web. For example, the e-book title for The Hunger Games will have to match exactly to the title of the paperback and audio versions. The same is true for autographed editions and movie-tie-in editions – each of these has a specific field where this information can be noted.
5. Don’t put the author’s name in the title field as in: Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight. The title is simply Twilight. There is a specific field for the author’s name that needs to be utilized.
6. Avoid listing items such as the edition number, volume number, or series name in the title field. These items have their own unique fields for submissions (this means A Dance with Dragons will appear as simply that title on the web, not A Song of Fire and Ice Series: A Dance with Dragons, Book 5).
The key to entering your titles for the web is to remember that each piece of information has its own field where it can be represented. Look for those special areas (fields) where you can list the specific edition, volume, format, author’s name, series name, and even the subtitle for your book. These points will enhance the book’s searchability and completeness on the web. Ready? Get set, go!
