Daily Diary, May 4, 2022 Day 612:
In 2009, when I decided to self-publish Maids of Misfortune, I had no idea that the book or the series would become as successful as it did. There weren’t a lot of examples out there of authors who had chosen this route—particularly authors who hadn’t been traditionally published before—and been successful. On the other hand, the risks were small. As I mentioned in the last post, my initial outlay was minimal. In addition, if no one bought the book, it would sink into obscurity online, and, except for my friends and family, no one would be the wiser.
Most of all, the success or failure of the book would be in my hands, because I was in control of all the decisions—the writing, the editing, the title, the cover, the price, the production, distribution, and the marketing. To me, that was, and still is, immensely satisfying.
Titles were one of the first places where being self-published gave me a level of control that a traditionally published author did not have. My author friends had tentative titles in mind as they wrote, but they tried not to get too attached, knowing the publisher had final say.
By the time I decided to self-publish Maids of Misfortune, I had the benefit of decades of brainstorming titles with my writers group (and reading mysteries myself) and I had a clear idea of what I needed to consider. First of all, I knew, if possible, to choose a title that hadn’t already been used. I knew that titles, like covers, should convey the tone of a book and its genre or subgenre. Finally, as I read about the growing importance of online book retailers and search optimization, I concluded that a subtitle for my series with appropriate keywords would be an important strategy to getting it noticed.
The underlying goal for writing these mysteries has always been to feature the occupations of late 19th century women (the subject of my doctoral dissertation). Consequently, for all my full-length novels, the title needed to suggest the main occupation that I was featuring in that book. In Maids of Misfortune, my main protagonist, Annie, goes undercover as a domestic servant. However, I didn’t want the book to sound too academic, which is why I chose the word “Maids” to represent the occupation, not Domestic or Servant. I also wanted to give the reader a clue that this was a mystery, where something bad might happen female servants. The word “Misfortune” not only suggested it was a mystery, but more of a cozy mystery, without explicit violence. For instance, something like Massacre of the Maids, wouldn’t have been a good title for the book at all!
My decision to use the subtitle, “Victorian San Francisco” in all my books and subsequent shorter works, came after some thought. I had to discard my first ideas: “Gas Lamp,” “Gilded Age,” and “Victorian” because other authors had already taken these subtitles for their successful historical mystery series set in this period. That is when I decided to combine San Francisco with Victorian. Unlike the term Gilded Age, Victorian is a historical term that is known by people outside the U.S. However, by adding San Francisco, I would ensure that no one would buy the book expecting the story to be set in foggy England.
My second book, which I had already outlined when I published Maids of Misfortune, was going to look into spiritualists and trance mediums who purported to communicate with the dead, another one of those female-dominated occupations of the 19th century. The title I gave it, Uneasy Spirits, satisfied all my requirements. “Spirits” referred to the occupation and the plot, “Uneasy” reflected the cozy tone. This title also had the two-word combination that would become part of the branding for the rest of my novels: Bloody Lessons is about school teachers, Deadly Proof is about women in the printing trades, Pilfered Promises is about women working in department stores, Scholarly Pursuits is about women attending a university, Lethal Remedies is about women in the medical professions, and Entangled Threads (my newest novel) is about women in the woolen manufacturing industry.
As you can tell, I quite enjoy coming up with my titles, and that pleasure has been extended to the titles I’ve given my shorter works, the stories and novellas. These shorter works usually feature minor characters from my series, and, in some cases, they are only tangentially mysteries. I started using alliteration in the first short story, Dandy Detects, about how the Boston Terrier in Annie’s boardinghouse helps solve a crime. I have continued to use alleration, since I feel this does a good job of suggesting that these stories are generally more light-hearted and humorous than my full-length novels. The second title I came up with, for the short story The Misses Mofffet Mend a Marriage (featuring two elderly dressmakers) should give you a feel for this approach (as should my current work in progress, Mrs. Stein Solves a Crime.)
I suspect that if a traditional publisher had even been interested in publishing my shorter works (a whole topic for a later post), I would probably have gotten some push back on these titles and how over the top some of them are.
It is possible that my ability to choose my own titles could have been a problem. People could have hated the title, or they could have attracted the wrong audience, etc. But it would have been my failure. What I wouldn’t have had to do is spend the rest of my life kicking myself for having given into some agent or publisher’s opinion. In addition, as an indie author, I even have the option of changing a title if I so desire. Something some indie authors find themselves doing, especially when they feel they need to rebrand through changing their covers.
So, the next post is going to be about choosing the covers for my mystery series, and how, like the titles, I used the cover design as part of my own branding of the series.