How to Name Your Bestseller (Hint, it involves “Girls”)

Despite the old adage, we all know that everyone judges a book by its cover. So why do some books sell while others languish on store shelves or in Amazon fulfilment centers? I submit to you that what moves those glossy tomes is as simple as the few words printed on them.

I’ve used the freely available New York Times Bestsellers API to study the titles of the most popular books of the last 5 years. Having carefully examined the data, I’m ready to share my results with the would-be authors of the world. Below I’ll show you how to title your future best-seller using just a few simple tricks.

Learn What Words Work

Does anyone know the name of the bestseller that has racked up over 100 weeks (over 2 years!) on the NYT fiction best-seller list? Chances are that you’ve seen the book at your local airport kiosk and felt it’s near-perfect title working subtly on your subconscious. I’m of course referring to Paula Hawkins’ “The Girl on the Train”. It turns out that this book uses one of the most powerful words in modern fiction, namely “Girl”. In fact, if we take a list of all the fiction bestsellers of the past year, we find that there is no more popular word. Below is a word cloud created by breaking down the titles of these books. As we can clearly see, some words seem to work like magic to attract potential readers.

Most Popular words in Fiction from the last year

Add Mystery

Looking at the most popular words in our list of bestsellers, we can see other tricks being utilized. Look closely. What patterns do you see?

It turns out that if we take the data from the past 5 years, we find many of the same popular words. We get things like “Dark” (31 titles), “Shadow” (16), “Night” (28), “Secret” (21), “Storm” (14), “Gone” (8), and “Game” (16).

What do these words have in common? Each of them implies a mystery. Perhaps we can read about things hidden behind ‘dark’ ‘shadows’, or maybe learn about a ‘game’ that we don’t know the rules to. Or maybe there is some important ‘secret’ we have to discover. As experts in persuasion will tell you, nothing…