McDonald’s and Charlie Sheen would be bad titles, too

In regards to yesterday’s post on author’s acknowledgements: The Ottoman Hotel, Christopher Currie’s novel that includes a marriage proposal within the acknowledgement section, is poorly titled.

There is a real Ottoman Hotel in Turkey that is apparently quite well known. The first five pages of Google return results related to the hotel, so breaking through to the first page is going to be difficult for Currie.

Adding the word "book" to the query doesn’t help either. The Ottoman Hotel remains the subject of the results, and options for booking a room fill the page instead.

Only when "The Ottoman Hotel" is combined with Currie’s name does mentions of his book begin to appear.

Not good for a reader looking for a book but can’t remember the author’s name.

But a good lesson for authors choosing their titles.

Make those titles unique.