Want to write a wildly popular post? Put the word “Facebook” in the title.
Want to write a wildly popular novel? Put the word “wife” in the title.
Some of the best-selling books in recent years were (and none of these belong to the romance genre):
A Reliable Wife – not bad at all
The Silent Wife – poorly written and unconvincing
How to Be a Good Wife – a really brilliant novel
The Aviator’s Wife – haven’t read it and not interested
The Paris Wife – might pick it up at some point
American Wife – it’s supposed to be based on the life of Laura Bush but I’m still not tempted
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives – not my thing but crowds of people I know loved it
Wife 22 – not my thing either
The Tiger’s Wife – might be interesting
The Wives: The Women Behind Russia’s Literary Giants – interesting but I worry about what reading this book will do to my blood pressure
The Wife (by Meg Wolitzer) – haven’t read it and am wondering if I need to get acquainted with this writer that everybody is raving about
Husbands are not equally great title material. There is Dean Koontz’s The Husband, but I don’t remember any other notable novels not in the romance genre with this word in the title.
I’m sure I don’t have to explain to anybody the reasons for these phenomena.
Just observe that I didn’t put “Facebook” in the post’s title because I don’t chase after cheap popularity.
Clarissa's Blog 
Does that mean that “The Facebook Wife” would be the ideal title an e-book? 🙂
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A brilliant idea! 🙂 🙂
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And then there’ll be the biographical version, “The Facebook Tycoon’s Wife”, a gawpingly awful true story about Mister Facebook’s actual wife …
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Haha, that is a great observation. I just got the widely advertised book “The Wife Project” for my birthday (I am a bit skeptical about it — apparently it is about the quest of an autistic guy to find a wife), and I would also like to add the hugely successful book “The Time Travellers’ Wife” to your list.
And my post on facebook is also one of my most popular posts, I thought that this was because of the brilliance of this post, but apparently not. 🙂
You say the reasons are obvious, so here is my guess: Being a wife is still the dream and main project of many women, unfortunately, and they buy all these books…. and facebook is endlessly fascinating because other people and how to present oneself to those other people is endlessly fascinating.
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Actually, I misremembered, sorry: the book is called “The Rosie Project” but in the blurb on the back it says “A handsome thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don’s never had a second date. So he devises The Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner.” Comes close I guess. 🙂
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I saw this in the bookshop and thought; oh dear, another version of the Pygmalion myth, hasn’t the world got enough of those?
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I have to say: if a book has the word “wife” in its title, I’m practically guaranteed to pick it up and give it a look. And it has never been that big of a project for me. 🙂
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So now I am curious: what is the obvious reason for that? I think reading wife in the title would somehow rather discourage me from picking the book up… sounds a bit boring to me. 🙂 Except when it is paired with time travelling.
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“The Aviator’s Wife”
For a second I thought this might be about this movie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aviator's Wife
the first movie I ever saw by Eric Rohmer, one of my favorite directors ever.
two minutes, which I don’t understand without subtitles….
little plot, a lot of talking about the meaning of life and micro-analysing relationships – an acquired taste for sure, but I once you acquire it anything else seems thin….
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Oops trying to fix the link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aviator's_Wife
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A great post. In the present era, branding is king. Your insight into best words to use in blog and book titles qualifies you for a lucrative career as a branding consultant. Probably make more money than a professor. 🙂
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The Time Traveller’s Wife! 🙂
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