How Long should Book Titles and Subtitles Be?
On June 4, 2019, relatively soon after my book was published by World Scientific Publishing,
the New York Times published an article by Rachel Kramer Bussel entitled
"Why Book Subtitles are Getting Ridiculously Long".
Ms. Bussel (the author of quite a few provocative books, including
Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays, published by Thought Catalog Books, 2014,)
wrote:
"How many words can you fit in a subtitle?
For a slew of modern books, the answer seems to be as many as possible.
Just look at
Julie Holland's Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You're Taking, the Sleep You're Missing, the Sex You're Not Having, and What's Really Making You Crazy,
Erin McHugh's Political Suicide: Missteps, Peccadilloes, Bad Calls, Backroom Hijinx, Sordid Pasts, Rotten Breaks, and Just Plain Dumb Mistakes in the Annals of American Politics,
and Ryan Grim's We've got People: From Jesse Jackson to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the End of Big Money and the Rise of a Movement.
Blame a one-word culprit: search ...
Amazon allows up to 199 characters for a book's title and subtitle combined ..."
Okay, so why should I, or you, care?
Well, for one thing, maybe I'm feeling a bit defensive about the combined length of the title and subtitle of my current book, even if it's not as egregious as the above-mentioned examples. (!)
Or maybe I just enjoy responding to relevant op-ed opinion pieces that have appeared in the New York Times.
After all, I did refer on page 22 in my most recent book to two op-eds that Jon Grinspan authored, in 2014 and 2015.
And true, I had made the connection of
those classy T-shirts that I got printed for my book
with @RachelNuwer's contribution to the discussion on twitter at
#DressLikeABook.
But still, is my trend really so out of control?:
Dissections: Plane and Fancy
Hinged Dissections: Swinging and Twisting
Piano-Hinged Dissections: Time to Fold!
Ernest Irving Freese's Geometric Transformations: the Man, the Manuscript, the Magnificent Dissections!
Last updated June 10, 2019.