The Shifting Sands of Naming a Book

One of my clients is about to publish his first book.

It’s a big, big deal when a book finally comes to market. They’re not quick things. A book’s pub date and official launch often signify the culmination of literally years of work for the writer.

Ian Chisholm started working on his book back in 2019, wanting to codify the philosophical foundation that underpins his company. Roy Group is a leadership development firm that Ian cofounded back in 2000 with Anne-Marie Daniel. They’ve worked with BC Wildfire Services, Fountain Tire, St. Michaels University School, the Canadian Grain Commission, CheckFront, Grant Thornton, Starfish Medical, YPO and dozens upon dozens of smaller companies, charities and schools.

In 2022, Ian took a pause from writing to contemplate and recalibrate. What the hell was he actually trying to say? Books are demanding, layered projects that often require a lot of open time, structured thinking, and stop-start writing to come together.

He picked his pen back up at the end of that year, fully engaged and having a better sense of where he wanted to take it. He brought me along as his book coach. (I’d been assisting the whole time, but by 2022 I was enrolled in Author Accelerator’s book coach certification program and was learning a more robust and helpful way of guiding him.) And he didn’t stop working until he submitted the manuscript to his publisher at the end of 2024.

It's pretty incredible to see the fruit of all that labour now hanging casually on the tree, like a perfect, shining fig that’s ready for picking. The finished book looks so straightforward. So…together. Couple hundred pages of storytelling, some grounding meditations, a good-looking cover, a killer blurb from The Culture Code author Daniel Coyle on the front cover, some words from coaching legend Tim Gallwey, author of The Inner Game of Tennis, on the back. Foreword by social entrepreneur Zita Cobb, who built this quilt-strewn castle way out on the edge of Newfoundland’s grittiest knob of rock and in so doing, breathed life back into her tiny fishing village.

It’s a pretty clean package. Almost looks like it was easy to do.

But the published book doesn’t signal anything about all the hours Ian spent thinking about the point he wanted to make, nor the best organizational structure through which to make it. It doesn’t signal anything about all the months we spent together developing a blueprint to map out the book. Nothing about all the months he toiled through pinning his first draft to the page. All the freewrites he did to release himself from writer’s block. All the revisions I asked for that made the words work better. All the long days juggling both his business and his writing. The time he told me I was giving him too much feedback. The time I sniffed that he wasn’t implementing it. The many weeks of preparing his final draft before he submitted it to his publishers at Page Two. The emails, the phone calls, the meetings.

Books look deceptively simple.

But they’re real assholes to wrangle.

They’re complicated and complex, with dozens of moving pieces and timelines, many of which interconnect and influence each other. They’re logic puzzles. They eat time like a carnival kid snorts a bag of candy floss.

And you can’t skip a single step. Nailing every part of the process is critical to producing a commercially viable book.

Today I’m going to home in on just one teeny tiny part of the process: landing on the perfect title.

The one that’ll actually move copies.

First up, know that we ALL judge books by their covers—and titles.

A title does much of a book’s heavy lifting. It's the first thing people see along with the cover of your book. Covers actually account for about half of sales, if you can believe it. We all know from experience we ought not to judge a book by its cover, but historical sales data consistently demonstrates our general lack of discernment as bias-driven human shoppers: a book's cover really does matter in how readers judge its merit.

And of course, your title’s also right there on the cover in large, bold font.

So there’s a great deal of strategy to getting the title right.

Early in the book planning process, Ian chose a working title. We knew the book was going to be about mentorship; after all, the primary reasons he wrote it were a) to argue that western society’s current understanding of mentorship is pretty off-base, b) to show us a more effective way to create lasting impact in people’s lives, and c) to simultaneously walk readers through a path of inner growth to ground them with more strength in today’s bizarre world.

Mentor’s Way fit the bill, neatly summarizing the book’s focus.

It also did a second job, hinting at the connection between the concept of a mentor and the man of legend who originally carried the word as his given name. It’s a surprising story—one that involves widely famous Greek figures and yet is currently known by maybe sixteen people worldwide. (Ian unpacks that story in the book; you’ll never look at Odysseus the same way.)

An earlier version of the title was The Mentorfesto. This title reflected how urgent Ian feels this set of guidelines to be that he's putting into the world in the form of a book. The book represents a summation of his learned experience, his noticing, his observations of what works in terms of serving as a mentor for other people. He’s watched a lot of them.

Mentor’s Way and The Mentorfesto are just two of the several different working titles Ian developed as we got underway. But see how even just these two options express a slightly different nuance to potential readers? Like filters on your iPhone camera, they cast a slightly different perspective.

You want to have a title that either summarizes your book quickly so people have an idea of what it's about, or one piques their interest. When Tim Ferriss wrote The Four Hour Work Week, that got people's attention.

Some writers aim for a title that shocks, and those can work out well, too. Mark Manson published The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck in 2016 and that got people's attention.

Or you can signal who you're writing the book for. When the first of the Dummies series came out in 1991 (DOS for Dummies), beginners immediately knew they had a handbook to guide them. Come to think of it, that title also qualifies as having shock value, and even though I’m sure it terrified everybody at IDG Books the first time they published a title that framed readers as being kinda stupid, the risk paid off, because the Dummies series spanned over 2500 titles and sold more than 250 million books worldwide.

I can’t link you to IDG Books because Wiley acquired them sometime in the 90s, thrilled to welcome the Dummies cash cow to their stable.

Your might pick a couple words from inside the book for your title, like a catchy phrase. The title of Harper Lee’s 1951 breakout bestseller—currently banned in various parts of the U.S.—came from Atticus Finch telling his kids to "Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

There are lots of different ways that a title can come through for a book.

And sometimes it’ll change as the book moves through the publishing pipeline, like it did for Ian.

That time when we missed the flashing red light

We had been working with Mentor’s Way for well over a year, feeling really sure that this would be the book’s title out in the wild, because it was just so strong and presented such a clear offering: This book is going to show you the way to showing up with that nice Jesus / Buddha vibe that we associate with a true mentor. You’re gonna change lives, baby doll.

We liked it because it had the word mentor in it—very clear what the book dealt with. We liked it because the title was a simple declarative statement of this is the way. And I particularly liked it because the way is what the Tao Te Ching is all about. It's the way to show up in life. It's the way to allow life to come, to move through you, to not knock you off balance—or at least if it knocks you off balance, to know how to get back to a grounded place. It's all about letting things flow naturally and yielding to circumstances rather than forcing them. There's so much in Ian’s book that aligns with the teachings of the Tao Te Ching, so I was really excited that the word way was in there.

We were stoked. It was a really synchronous title. But we got maybe three-quarters of the way through writing the book before it dawned on me that we should probably Google that exact set of words—Mentor’s Way—in quotation marks, just to see what else was out there.

I was gobsmacked to find out that Mentor’s Way is actually the name of another guy's business. Turns out he’s in this space of mentorship, too. And it wasn't an insignificant business either, right? You know how sometimes you can Google a phrase and see that yeah, there's a tiny garage band with a song by the same name, or you might find a Blogger post from 2013 using that same phrase as a title, or there might be a bush trail in east-central Australia with that name, and then you're good to go.

But in this case, this was actually a viable business.

I broke the news to Ian, and we spent quite a few days at the bottom of the well. We groaned at each other about it for weeks afterward. Months, even.

But it didn’t matter how we felt about it: the title had to change.

Quite quickly—despite his grief—Ian came back with Athena's Way.

Athena is a critical character in one of the stories he tells in the book. It’s a story about that guy Mentor, and how he actually didn’t earn that title. Conversely, Athena rocked her job as a guide, whereas Mentor sort of shit the bed.

So we shifted to Athena's Way, which felt good. For me, it didn't feel quite as good as Mentor's Way because it wasn't as clear to the book buyer what Athena's way actually was. It didn’t say anything about the fact that the book is about mentorship.

But I loved the Athena connection. I really loved the idea of surfacing the fact that women have historically served as mentors just as much as men. In the current zeitgeist, we tend to picture mentors fairly narrowly, often as dudes who have exited their software companies and they've got their scheduled 1:1 meetings with their young charges, and they're going to go in there and they're going to “mentor” these kids.

But true mentorship as I’ve mentioned is a much more nuanced and subtle and generous kind of relationship energy that embodies the principles of wu wei. And plenty of women show up that way when they’re in roles of leadership or guidance, as leaders in business or community groups or as parents. True mentorship carries a yin energy, as opposed to the classically business-forward yang energy. So Athena’s Way felt good.

But I knew it might not stick.

Because even if an author has the best title they can think of, the book’s publisher has the final say—and nine times out of ten, that title will change. Publishers know what works in the marketplace. They know what’s too trendy, too cryptic, too cliché. They know what’ll confuse readers. They know what’s tone-deaf and is sure to fall flat. They know the industry inside and out, because they're the ones who read about the book industry all day long and talk about books over every meal and read books all night, every night. Sometimes to each other.

Publishers are the ones who have access to sales data. They're the ones who pay thousands a month for a subscription to BookScan that shows them what sold last week to whom, which books have sold the most copies over the last 20 years, and how much did that book make? Who's selling what in their backlist? They're able to take in the grand sweep of a title's impact on sales output.

And remember, publishing is a business. That there’s a profit motive in the land of books surprises people endlessly. Writers often come in thinking, I want my book to have this title because it means X, Y and Z to me. Whereas their publisher is thinking, I'm undertaking a significant risk here by agreeing to foot the bill for bringing this person’s book to market, and I'm damn well going to give it a name that I know is going to help its sales.

So I knew Ian’s publisher might very well change the title.

And that's in fact what happened.

Never underestimate the power of an editor.

Pretty quickly after Ian left my pipeline with Athena’s Way and entered his publisher’s pipeline, the book’s title came under the microscope. It looked like Athena’s Way wouldn’t be clear enough to prospective readers what this book is about. And in the hypercompetitive marketplace of business / leadership nonfiction, it's really important that your reader a) notices your book and b) can understand fairly quickly what it's about.

Because Ian actually lives the principle of wu wei, he of course was entirely able to move with the natural flow of things. Having long been a consultant, he understands that experts know their domains really well and that you're well advised to listen to their insights. He watched, dry-eyed, as his working title hit the bin. He trusted that his publisher knew what they were doing.

A stronger title arose when his editor, NYC-based Emily Schultz, found herself pausing at a key phrase one day as she was working through the manuscript. She brought it to the group.

“I found this term, quiet champions,” Emily said. “To me, that feels like what the book is about. Mentors are quiet champions.”

Everybody liked it. Ian liked it. The team liked it. And I liked it.

And it was the project’s editor who had found it—someone who works quietly and alone, who becomes deeply familiar with a book’s theme and principles, and who will sometimes rise out of their quiescent vigil to fight epic roaring battles with the publisher, the marketing team or the art department on behalf of a book’s best interests.

No battle necessary in this case.

Quiet Champions made perfect sense. A mentor’s work is to position their charge—their mentee—with greater and greater refinement. And they do that by taking a step back, not by taking over. They are quiet. They listen much more than they speak. They don't offer advice all the time. They don't get out there and show you how it's done. Rather, they learn how to ask questions and listen, and simply witness as you figure out how things are done.

So they're quiet.

And they’re champions because there’s a persistent undercurrent of unconditional love in this relationship. To champion someone means that you show up for them when things are great and you show up for them when things are grim. You show up however they need you to show up. You're not stuck in any particular way of being. Like water, the mentor finds their level, and moves the way the terrain requires.

If your mentee is experiencing distress in their home life, you show up and support them with that phase of their life.

If they’re experiencing distress and trouble at work, you show up and you coach and you witness and you walk with them as they face into the headwind.

When they’re up on the stage, you cheer like hell and then give feedback afterward.

How you show up as that quiet champion is what earns you the title of mentor.

So when Page Two came back with Quiet Champions, Ian knew his publisher had knocked it out of the park. He even queued up a video interview where they talk about how it all went down, plus a few other aspects of his experience having a book professionally published.

Title shifts are always a strategic move. In this case, the book is shelved in the business category (sub-category: leadership), but the message of quietly championing others hits the bullseye in the parenting category, too. It's adjacent to sports coaching. It's adjacent to teaching, philosophy, spirituality and self-help—basically anywhere you've got people helping others grow and develop and master themselves in this world.

It’s the book’s whole point expressed in two words.

I mean honestly, that Schultz kid killed it.

Athena still graces the cover of the book because of course, when a mentor shows up as a quiet champion, they’re showing the Athena signature.

I sense there’s yet another strategic advantage in the naming of this book, too: the people who pick it up already recognize that quiet champion within themselves—and that’s a mighty fine feeling. And when they give it as a gift to someone who has served as a mentor in their own life?

Boss.

Think of a book as a business unto itself.

Lot of thought just going into a damn title, right?

Yet that’s exactly how it is in book land.

Like a business name, a book’s title is a critically intricate piece of the puzzle—arguably one of the most important pieces. It's part of the overall gestalt that hits a person when they look at a book online, or when somebody tells them about this amazing book they just finished, or when they read a review or see it in the bookstore.

Every molecule inside a book’s orbit needs to be strategically considered: the audience, the main message, the structure, the reader’s emotional transformation as they move through the chapters, the cover art, the way the chapters are organized, the book’s layout and design, the thickness of the paper, the thematic prongs for marketing the thing, who’s blurbing it on the back cover, the best person to write the foreword (if it’s nonfiction). The title.

All that.

And of course, the message—the light and the love—that lives between the covers.