subtitled: How to come up with a good title for a book in today’s literary landscape while considering NICHE and SEO

This book was originally a blog (clearly it still is…), and it was one that I didn’t think would be very long.   I just had a few things to say, and also, I was going to try to promote my new business, which is an online store of teachers’ products and lessons I designed over the years.   Yet, one day I woke up and I had about twenty-five blog chapters.   So I decided to see about publishing it.

Fast forward to…I have changed the title of my book about fifty times.  As a new author, I want to get the title right because I know how important titles are.  My first concern is that I don’t want my readers to be limited to teachers, since this book is really  only half about teaching.  I don’t want it to be a particularly angry or negative title, since I try to focus on positive thoughts.  However, one can easily perceive a good number of strands of anger in this collection.  I don’t want to say that it is purely a memoir about my life, since it is definitely filled with cultural and political criticisms, evaluations of films, references to classic literature, and fairy tales about evil children who don’t receive proper upbringings.

So, for titles, here is the evolution:

Lessons Learned:  Journey of an English Teacher

Lessons I Never Learned:  A Three Decade Chronicle of the Life of an English Teacher

Unwritten Lessons

Essays, Empathy, and Everything We’ve Lost

A Teacher in the Crossfire

Stories I Couldn’t Tell in Class

The Last English Teacher

Teaching Truth in a Post-Truth World

Spirit Crushing/Soul Rewarding:  The Journey of an English Teacher

Staying Cheerful in a Menacing Environment:  Three Decades as a Teacher, Musician, Feminist, and Political Skeptic

From Books to Screens…And Other Disasters in American Education

OKAY, now that was about one-third of the titles that I have considered.  In the world of now, we all must find our “niche” in order to be seen or heard by anyone at all.  I doin’t have a following, and I’m not an “influencer.”  Not in the modern sense of the word anyway.   So…What is my niche?  I have been a devoted yet outraged English teacher for a pretty long time.  However, I consider myself to be a politically astute, humor-driven, gender rebelling musician as well.  All of these descriptors ornament many of the pages within my memoir. 

And so…Who is my niche?  I don’t know.  Weirdos over 40?  People who despise the current state of the country?  Lady guitar players?   Literature Geeks? Want-to-be or newbie teachers?  Seasoned or mid-career teachers?

Yes, yes, for sure, I think so, probably, and for sure.  

So now comes the problem of SEO.  Search Engine Optimization.  Creating a title to appeal to my potential niches.  Okay, here we go:

For Weirdos Over 40 Who Hate Our Country Right Now, But Who Are Also Guitar-Playing English Teachers, Literature Geeks, and Novice Memoir Authors

Well, I think I finally have it!   I hope my publishers agree, although for some reason….I think they will not.

Let me add that this book is dedicated to all the natural teachers in the world…those who love to explain things to other people and show them how to do things.   You will hopefully perpetuate all that is good and important.

I also dedicate it to some of my favorite writers, alive and dead:  David Sedaris -the greatest humor writer ever, Dave Barry- also an amazing humor writer, Jane Austen-also a phenomenal humorist of her time, Charles Dickens—the best writer who ever lived, and George Eliot (Mary anne Evans)-the other best writer who ever lived.  Oh and Sylvia Plath, John Kennedy Toole, and  J.D. Salinger -the tormented souls who could never have written anything like they wrote back then, now, because they would have been regularly medicated.  Oops…and one more:  Geoffrey Chaucer- greatest poet, humorist, and translator of medieval life into modern ears and eyes.

The great author Mary Anne Evans, a.k.a George Eliot