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I hope you enjoyed your weekend. This is the last week of summer and where I live, in the Midwest, we’re supposed to have summer-like weather all week. Yes!

I would like to invite you to this week’s special teleseminar, which will focus on two things:

• your questions about finding your best-selling book title
• a preview of what I’ll be covering on my course on “Choosing Your Best-Selling Title,” which starts in just two weeks.

Please mark your calendar for Wednesday, September 19, at 7 p.m. Central, 8 p.m. Eastern, for this call. I will have a special guest on for part of it as well, sharing what happened when she and her coauthor put to use the ideas from my first teleseminar on choosing a title.

So go ahead, sign up for the teleseminar and ask your question.

The book titling course will actually be about more than just titling a book. It will be about starting your book in the best way possible. Once you get your title and subtitle, your whole book idea will crystallize for you. You will be able to write your book faster, with less effort.

And–very important–when you have tested your title in the way I will teach you, you can be confident that your book will actually sell! In fact, you might be able to PRESELL your book to those who have helped you find your right title!

Please check it out.

I just signed up for something that you can already see on my site.

See to the right, Blog Rush? What is it and why should you put it on your own blog?

It’s an automatic way that fresh content related to your site gets on your blog constantly.

Why is this good for you?

For one thing, the search engines just LOVE fresh, relevant content. It will boost your rankings–effortlessly. Automatically.

See, in SE ranking, it’s all about fresh, relevant content–and LINKS. This gives you both. Relevant content, updated all the time, AND links to and from your site. This is truly amazing–and wonderful.

It was developed and just launched by traffic generation guru (of the best kind) John Reese. He has come up with an amazing way to get you traffic and exposure in the most viral way I’ve ever seen.

And get this–it’s FREE! I don’t quite get yet why John is doing this and giving it away, but hey, I’ll take his gift!

Take 5 minutes to register for Blog Rush now. Make sure you check your web statistics right after you sign up, so you can see what a difference this will make in terms of traffic to your blog.

And if you perchance don’t have a blog, this is a great reason to start one. If you need help putting up a WordPress blog–the best kind for many reasons, including that it has all kinds of widgets that make everything super simple–contact Cathy, The WordPress Wizard.

ONE DISCLAIMER: I don’t have any control over what shows up on my Blogosphere, so do keep that in mind. There are ways to filter keywords out and also urls, but I really can’t control what shows up. Keep that in mind if you see something that does not seem in keeping with what else you read on this site.

You have another opportunity to ask your question about choosing your best-selling book title, because next week I’ll be doing another teleseminar on this topic.

Specifically, this call will be a preview of what I plan to cover in the upcoming 5-module Telecourse, the “Publishing Insider’s Guide to Choosing Your Best-Selling Title.”

I invite you to visit this page to see if this course is something you need at this time.

If it sparks any question–about the course, or about finding your own winning book title–ask your question and come listen to the teleseminar! You’ll get all the details when you sign up.

Here’s a question asked recently about book titling I can answer quickly:

“Can you copyright a title?”

Answer: No. Book titles cannot be copyrighted. They can be trade marked, which is a whole separate process.

You can trademark a title,  if you like. That’s a whole separate process, and it’s somewhat time-consuming and costly. Rarely is it worth it for an author to trademark a title, unless it’s tied to a business or brand that you do want to trademark for wider purposes.  In that case, you’d decide for greater reasons than protecting the title.

What’s your question?

One of the questions I did not get to answer on the recent teleseminar on “Choosing Your Best-Selling Book Title” came from Gitie.

“Should one keep the title a secret from others while still looking for a publisher?”

The question is a good one because it gets at an underlying anxiety many authors have: “If I tell the world about my book, will someone steal my idea before it gets in print?” (I don’t know if this is what Gitie meant, but this is how I read it.)

My answer is no, no one will steal your idea. While you cannot copyright a book title (though you may also trademark it), it’s unlikely someone would go ahead and steal your idea.

Even if they did, they would not write the exact same book as you. Your idea is bound to your unique way of saying something, your unique take on a topic. No two people would write the exact same book, so even if the topic were similar and the title the same, there is arguably room enough in the world for both books.

What this fearful mindset does is cut an author off from getting very important information: whether anyone would actually be interested enough in the idea to buy a book. If you can’t talk about your book to people to test if anyone is interested in your idea, how on earth will you promote it once it’s published?

And if you won’t test the idea now, how will you have the confidence to pitch it to a publisher? Make no mistake, your potential publisher is the first person you have to “sell” your book idea to.

So my answer is, NO–you should not keep your title a secret! In fact, you should do everything you can to test your title on those who would be your potential market. (Which, by the way, are not those who are likely to steal your idea anyway. They’re the people who would be interested in your topic, who would look to your expertise, and not consider ripping off your idea.)

I have put together a guide called “7 Action Steps for Finding Your Best-Selling Title” that will take you step-by-step through creating a “swipe file” of best-selling titles, narrowing down your list, and then testing it. This is the process I highly recommend.

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

You can find the most recent copy of the Your Book Publishing Coach newsletter up on the site, available in PDF format for instant downloading.

I suggest you open it on your desktop first so you can investigate any links that interest you, then print it out for future reference.

Other goodies for you:

• The latest article, “Magic Words that Make Books Sell.” Fascinating information from one of the most complete studies ever done on effective book titles–what words sell books.
• The amazing study mentioned in the article above is now available, if you care to read it yourself. It’s called “The Fist Hundred Million” and you can get the digital version right away here.
• Sell your book by book title alone–sign up for the “Insider’s Guide to Choosing Your Best-Selling Title” 5-module telecourse to find out how. This course will give you the tools to come up with not only winning book titles, but great titles and headlines for other information products and marketing tools as well. Find out more and sign up for the early-bird special while you still can.

One of the questions someone asked me on my last teleseminar (you can still listen to the replay) was:

“What magic words make books sell?”

(I’m sure the question came from my mentioning some fascinating research that uncovered certain words that make people buy one title over another.)

The answer to the question is in the new article I posted.

I will also answer the question in a new course I will be teaching, starting the first week in October, called the “Publishing Insiders Guide to Choosing Your Best-selling Title.” It will contain 5 modules, and will be a hands-on workshop. Over the course of 5 weeks, you will come up with the best possible title for your book or information product–guaranteed! You’ll know conclusively what’s best (if you do the homework), and even perhaps make some money along the way.

Find out all about it now.

Also note: the early-bird special, in which the first 7 people to sign up today and tomorrow will also get Jump Start Your Book: 12 Questions You Must Answer to Write a Book that Sells FOR FREE will end tomorrow.

With the “Jump Start Your Book: 12 Questions You Must Answer to Write a Book that Sells” Tool Kit, you can actually start your book this weekend!

Even if you only have a vague idea of what you want your book to be about, one of the bonuses that comes with the tool kit shows how to start an information product from scratch.

Sign up for the course, get Jump Start Your Book (which also comes with a complimentary coaching session), and let’s get your book rolling toward best-seller status!

If you haven’t already written your book … or you are in the stages of writing your book … or if you’ve written your book but are not sure it will sell to a publisher or the public … I think you should know about the “Jump Start Your Book: 12 Questions You Must Answer to Write a Book that Sells” Tool Kit.

Especially because, until Tuesday only, I am offering a way for you to get it for FREE.

You will get this valuable Tool Kit–itself the equivalent of two coaching sessions–when you sign up for a very important course I just developed: “The Publishing Insider’s Guide to Choosing a Best-Selling Title.” It’s a 5-module telecourse that will teach you the art and science of choosing your winning title.

The free Jump Start Your Book Tool Kit is only available to the first 7 people who register for the course today, Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday before 9 p.m. Central. (I wanted to make it fair to those who do not have access to email over the holiday weekend–which I hope you’re enjoying!)

Signing up now also means you will save $100 off the course. That’s a savings of $197.

Check it all out now. This weekend, you can start your book–the right way–so that it sells!