Cool autobiography titles
10 memoir title ideas and why they work so well
Good memoir titles should entice or intrigue the reader, evoke a sense or spirit of the book, and give readers a hint as to the tone of the story they’re going to read. A good memoir title can help sell a book, a bad one can sink it.
So how do you come up with a good memoir title for your book?
Good memoir titles come in many shapes and sizes
From snappy single-word memoir titles, to fragments of phrases, and snippets of conversation, there is no one-size-fits-all. There are occasional trends towards certain types of title – single-word titles (Becoming, Arranged, Ghosted, Educated) have been big, but the autobiography and memoir market has space for all kinds of titles. So don’t worry about trying to fit your title into a particular style.
To help you think up the best and most appropriate title for your memoir, here are some good memoir titles, grouped into types, drawn from books published in the last few years.
Single word memoir titles
There’s a trend for single word memoir titles, like Educated (Tara Westover), Toast (Nigel Slater), Redeemable (Erwin Jones), Stumped (Richard Harrison) and the most famous one-word memoir title of recent times, Becoming by Michelle Obama.
If you’re considering single word memoir titles, consider using active verbs like fighting, running, winning to give that sense of action and forward motion.
The ‘I told you I could eat a frog’ type memoir titles
Fragments of speech drawn from your manuscript can make for interesting titles.
One of my favourite examples of this approach is No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (Mark Hodkinson). It’s a very elegant example of how a few carefully chosen words can really sum up the ethos, feel, and intentions of a whole book.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson is the question her mother asked her when she learnt that her daughter was a lesbian. Again, that one line of speech sums up so much about
When we at Why Not Bookswere considering titles for the memoirs of the late Carolyn Goodman, mother of slain civil rights worker Andrew Goodman and a civil rights icon herself, we harkened back to a particular story she told:
When my youngest son David was seven years old, he came running home from school one day, breathless with excitement. In his hands he held a large piece of construction paper smothered in assorted colors, lines, shapes, and squiggles. In the eyes of a seven-year-old, it was a creation of unmatched brilliance, Monet and Degas and O’Keeffe all rolled into one. In fact, that’s quite literally what it looked like. With the flamboyance only a true artist can exude, David boomed into our Upper West Side apartment, raised his magnum opus, and proudly declared, “Mom, come here! Look at my mantelpiece!”
A masterpiece is essentially the product of another’s estimation. Someone else reviews your life’s work and pronounces judgment. But a mantelpiece is a personal statement of values and choices, your life’s work presented as a museum of the self… My life has been a work of art—a wondrous, colorful, tragic, flawed, intimate and epic work of art. This is my story. This is my mantelpiece.
So that’s what it became—MY MANTELPIECE: A Memoir of Survival and Social Justice.
Selecting a title for a well-known person’s autobiography or memoir can be a challenge. For some reason, iIf you’re an unknown with a remarkable story, it seems easier to choose evocative titles like Girl, Interrupted(Susanna Kaysen), The Color of Water(James McBride), or Reading Lolita in Tehran(Azar Nafisi). But when you’re a celebrity of some sort, it can be a bit trickier. And not always successful.
We at the Why Not 100have ranked 69 of the more interesting choices through the years. Those at the top of the list are wonderful. Those at the bottom are wince-inducing. You be the judg
50 Eye-Catching Autobiography Titles (+ How to Write Your Own)
You’ve written your life story.
You’ve laid your heart bare before the world
So, what’s the best title for your one-of-a-kind masterpiece?
“____________: An Autobiography”?
Nooo!
Seriously, unless you’re a household name, using “autobiography” as part of your title might not work in your favor, but not to worry. You don’t have to be famous to write an autobiography, but you do need a title that will grab a buyer’s attention, so they know your book is worth a second look.
The purpose of this article is to break down what makes a standout autobiography title and the process for creating your own.
The secret sauce for writing an amazing book title
The process of creating an autobiography book title that gets noticed starts with a marketer’s mindset.
Yes, it all boils down to strategic book positioning in the marketplace. Creativity is a big part of it, but that’s a small part of the bigger picture. After all, if your book doesn’t get in front of the people who would be most likely to read it, you can’t change lives with the content inside!
Unlike fiction books or other types of nonfiction books (e.g. business books or textbooks) where there’s a specific category or genre expectation, autobiographies play by their own set of rules—the more creative the better.
How to think like a marketer when creating your title
If you are self-publishing your book, then you’re probably already aware that marketing is a key component of your book’s success, but what is marketing exactly?
The American Marketing Association defines marketing as
Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.
When marketing your book, knowing how to write a good book title matters, because, alo .