A Book By Any Other Name

Despite maxims to the contrary, many people can and do judge a book by its cover. A surprisingly large amount of time goes into deciding what goes on the cover of a book, from the art to the type treatment to the perfect cover blurb. Most book covers are about the same size and attempt to convey pretty much the same information: What is it called? Who is it by? What is it about? And, more subtly but most importantly, is this book the right book for me? The Book Cover Archive is a great site for exploring the possibilities of the format.

But this entry is really about titles. A book title gives a book its identity, and the process of titling a book can be long and painful. An article in this week’s New York Observer shares the plight of one author who had to give up her title due to an internal conflict at the publisher:

Joanna Smith Rakoff had just turned in a major set of rewrites on her novel, Brooklyn, when her editor at Scribner broke the news to her over dinner that she would have to change its title. It seemed that Irish novelist Colm Tóibín, a Scribner author since 2000 who has been twice short-listed for the Booker Prize, wanted to use it for his forthcoming book, which was scheduled to come out this spring, just a month after Ms. Rakoff’s.

At least Rakoff got a dinner out of it, and a title she likes even better: A Fortunate Age. Gary Dexter’s blog and new book, Why Not Catch-21?, tell more stories about how books get their titles. So where did Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 come from?

…it could have been Catch-18. This was Heller’s original title – and his title throughout all the long years of composition, from 1953 to 1961. However, just before the book was published Leon Uris produced his novel Mila 18. Heller’s publishers, Simon and Schuster, thought two books with ‘18’ in the title in one year was one book too many, and suggested a change. Heller was distraught (‘I thought 18 was the only number’ he said in an interview) and there began a long period of numerical agonizing in which numbers such as 11 and 14 were considered and rejected. Finally Robert Gottlieb at Simon and Schuster suggested 22, which Heller approved as a more significant number…

It’s nice to know that we aren’t the only ones losing sleep over our titles here at Portfolio. Many of our bestselling titles went through a number of identity crises before they hit the bookshelves. Geoff Colvin‘s Talent Is Overrated was originally called The Myth of the Natural, and stayed that way until just a few days before the book went to press.

Seth Godin‘s The Dip started out with the working title This Light Never Turns Green, until Seth had a moment of brilliance during a meeting in our publisher Adrian Zackheim’s office. Seth’s whiteboard doodles from that day are still on display, a reminder that sometimes those endless title discussions are worth the extra effort.