After discussing the topic earlier with new pal Michelle Gaseor of The Modern Manuscript http://themodernmanuscript.wordpress.com I realized that many people are unaware a publisher can and often will make the decision to change the title of your novel.  On the two titles of mine that were changed, I was given several reasons, none of which made sense to me as the titles they came up with were so generic and bland (I won’t make you guess, they were responsible for the names Borderland and Nightmare and had no small amount of frustrating input on several others) they made my titles seem genius in comparison.  You’ll say I should have stuck to my guns, but when you’re a fledgling author working with publishers, editors and sales departments and they’re using experience in the business to back up their call, it’s difficult to say you know better than they do.

One of the names I had chosen was used before, claimed the editors, so it wasn’t wise to use it again.  But then so was Borderland and so was Nightmare, but they said those titles were years old and so it was all right to use them again. I wanted to ask how long ago my title was used, but trust me, when they’re determined to change your book title, they are going to change your book title.  Be a creative marketing genius if you can, or have a spreadsheet of economic Moneyball stats to back you up when you want to fight for that name, because it’s going to be the name of that book, well…forever.