More about titles

Since writing about The Third Man and the titles of other political autobiographies, I contemplated just how hard it is to get the title right.  I've discovered that Lulu - the American self publishing company - now have a programme to analyse your chosen novel title. It claims that

for the first time in literary history, you can put your title to the scientific test and find out whether it has what it takes for bestseller success.

A GOOD CONFESSION apparently has a 26.3% chance of being a bestseller.  

Bonfire of the Vanities also has a 26.3% chance and The Importance of Being Ernest notched up 26.3%
Sensing that there could be a pattern here (i.e. that everything has about a 1 in 4 chance of being a runaway success according to the wildly optimistic Lulu),  I put in Lolita.  Nabokov's masterpiece only has 20.1% chance of making the big time.

Click on the title of this post to try out the site.

My favourite all time title I think has to be THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD (an Andy Garcia film with a great plot). It scored just 10.2%