The inside Story of a Failed Book Title (Part II)

A few months ago I posted about the abject failure of The Oneiromancer of Mars. Misleading title, misleading image on the book cover, wrong genre message. But hey, if you're going get something wrong then you may as well go all out and get it 100% wrong. It's taken me a while but at last I've coaxed myself into rolling up my sleeves and fixing it.

Why's it taken so long? Well, first of all I liked the title. The core idea for the book started with the title. "I've had a great idea for Martian Dreams book 2," I said to my wife while we were out walking. "What do you think about The Oneiromancer of Mars?"

"What's an Oneiromancer?" she asked.

That should have been warning flag number one. But instead, I set about explaining all about oneiromancy, that well-known science fictional trope. 

Another thing that has made this process of change so difficult to accept was that I loved the original book cover. Loved it. I'd explained the concept to my cover artist. I had spelled out my vision, and he delivered exactly what I wanted. Why on Earth would I ever want to change it?

But I had to. That lovely cover had to go, and more importantly, the book's title had to go, and here's the thing. Changing a book's title is not straightforward. There could have been tears. I had to unpublish the Oneiromancer – a brutal process that means losing all the reviews I'd gained, and to be fair they were good reviews. Average 4.8 stars. So the handful of people who dared to read the book actually liked it.

Starting from scratch has other risks, too. What if one of those handful of loyal, cross-genre fans thought I'd written a new book? They might go out and buy it again? Would they be annoyed to find they'd bought a book they'd already read? I would be. So there has to be a content warning right at the start of the book description. Not a great selling point.

But I've taken the plunge. Girl in a Spacesuit is a title that tells the reader exactly what they can expect - a story about a girl in space. It's also consistent with the title of the first book in the series, Old Man in a Spacesuit. And just in case that isn't enough, the new cover is a picture of, yes, a girl in a spacesuit.

I republished two weeks ago. It's still early days. I won't be buying a luxury yacht just yet, or even a toy yacht to sail on New Brighton boating lake, but still, so far so good.

Girl in a Spacesuit is out in the wild, on Amazon and most other platforms via Books to Read.