The subtitle needs work

Yesterday, during a transmittal meeting, we spent some time discussing the subtitle of a forthcoming book. Was it as lively as the book’s content? Should we use the word “steel” in the title and the subtitle? What would the author prefer?

Shelf Awareness points the way this morning to a piece on EW‘s Shelf Life blog regarding the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s new memoir.

… there’s at least one aspect of Palin’s opus that seems familiar… perhaps too familiar. And that’s the subtitle: An American Life. Astute history buffs will remember that that was the subtitle of Ronald Reagan’s best-selling 1990 memoir, of course. But in recent years, the three-word phrase has been the default setting for biographies of a host of people who share only the same geographic accident of birth. I tracked down at least 20 examples, many of whose dust jackets appear below.


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Marketing & Sales Manager since 2012