Authors Electric

     I think we are probably all in agreement that it's important to get cover images right.      But we all know that words are important too.      So it's just as essential to get the title of your book right. It can be the hook which makes the difference between someone passing over your book and pausing, picking it up (or of course, clicking on it in the case of ebooks) and taking a peek inside - and then, hopefully, buying it. It has to grab the attention of the reader you are trying to attract: be memorable: piquing the curiosity perhaps ... Does what it says on the cover      With factual books, having the right words in the title can also, of course, help readers looking for a specific subject to find just what they are looking for. You might think that choosing a good title for a factual book is easier than for a fictional one, but it's far ...

Are you sure it's only a figment of the imagination? A gorgeous botanical drawing of a Triffid by Bryan Poole for the Science Fiction Classics (1998) Dr Seuss allegedly invented the word ‘nerd’. Lewis Carroll gave us Jabberwocks, slithy toves and vorpal blades.  And no dinner service is complete without a runcible spoon, courtesy of Edward Lear. Everyone has heard of robots - a word popularized by Karel Capek in 1920, although he credited his brother Josef with actually inventing it. Following the discovery of a newly discovered particle called a positron, Isaac Asimov provided his robots with ‘positronic’ brains to help give the stories a more scientific feel, even though he admitted himself that it was a bit of spoofery. It was catchy, sounded right, and stuck, and has been used ever since by other writers - not to mention being incorporated into the names of any number of companies: even non-nerds will have come across the word. Personally, my fa...