Of Manuscripts and Titles

I rose at 5AM Saturday morning to work on the edits for Once Upon A Project. I had two sets, one from my editor and one from my personal editor, my friend Kim whose got one of the sharpest sets of eyes out there and noted things like words repeated too often, words left out, awkward sentences, stuff like that. That meant going through a 117,000-word manuscript twice, even though there were pages and pages with no marks from either. This was also my last chance at re-writing (when I heard someone refer to the nearby city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, as "Ke-Nowhere," I knew I had to get that in my book!), and I'm feeling quite happy with the end result. The manuscript hasn't been copyedited yet - unusual in my experience - but my editor promised to discuss anything major the copyeditor wants to mess with. It was finished by 3PM. I put it aside for a few hours, making just one more change before e-mailing it later that evening.

I haven't had much luck with mainstream titles. The original title of this book was going to be The First Fifty Years. The marketing staff rejected that as being too limiting, suggesting that you have to be fifty to read it. So was the alternate, The Fifty-Year Itch. I put out a title call for the gals on one of the Yahoo groups I belong to, and someone suggested Once Upon A Project, which passed both the editor and the marketing test.

The Edge of a Dream was published as If These Walls Could Talk (after my first alternate choice, Anyplace I Hang My Hat, was rejected because somebody else - Susan Isaacs, I think - had a book out with that title)

The book I named Better Days was published as Nothing But Trouble after being rejected by the marketing department.

My first mainstream, The People Next Door, was accepted as it was.

One out of four, or 25%, of my mainstream title suggests were kept. With romance I've had a better odds:

A Love for All Seasons was accepted.

One on One was accepted.

Where There's Smoke was accepted.

Straight to the Heart was accepted.

Closer Than Close was accepted.

From This Day Forward was accepted.

Prelude to a Kiss was accepted.

Desire with an "e" (an odd choice until you consider the heroine's name was "Desiree") was published as Love Affair after my editor signed off on this alternate title instead of the one she liked the most, Prelude to a Kiss. I admit to being paranoid enough to suspect that a book with my title by another author was going to show up, but my editor promised that we would save the Prelude title for my next book. Considering that was a romantic comedy that went well with that breezy title, it all worked out fine in the end.

A Love of Her Own was accepted. (This book remains my cleanest ever - two words were changed. That's all.)

The title of my first book, At Long Last Love, was accepted.

9 out of 10, or 90%. The odds are better for me here.

But it's still a real crapshoot.