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Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

All in the name Long titles try to grab attention

We’d like this piece to be as concise as possible but that’s quite a challenge. For, we are talking of tomes with titles running to a few lines and merely listing them out will take up a few columns. Don’t trust us? Walk in to any bookstore and browse through the titles.

Anupama Chopra’s book is not just about the King of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan – but also about the ‘seductive world of Indian cinema’. Similarly, if you wondered what Kishore Biyani means by saying ‘It Happened in India,’ he explains that with his tagline ‘The story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the Great Indian Consumer’.

“With a number of books being released into the market, there is a necessity to reflect the contents of the book through the title. The attention span of the reader has also reduced; so it helps explain what the book is all about,” says Hemali Sodhi of Penguin India Books.

For a book that talks about ‘The Trouble with Physics,’ the tagline ‘The rise of string theory, the fall of a science, and what comes next’ is explanatory. Al Gore substantiates ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ with ‘The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it.’

“Explanatory taglines are more in non-fiction titles than in works of fiction,” points out Amitabha Bagchi, author of “Above Average”. Talking about his own book, he says, “Originally I had a lengthier, four-word title but was asked to make it short and crisp. I settled for “Above Average.” But I find the title has been misconstrued by some readers. I’ve been asked if I meant whether only IIT students are above average, whereas my intention is to highlight the pressure on students in IIT to constantly prove that they are above average.”

If explaining a book is one reason, Amitabha feels that a lengthier title or a tagline helps have more keywords. “If you use keywords such as Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywood or Indian Cinema on Amazon.com, you will hit upon Anupama Chopra’s book. The tagline helps on Internet search engines,” he says.

Author Sridala Swami, who recently released her book of poetry “The Reluctant Survivor” offers another perspective: “Research and academic papers tend to have lengthier titles that give them added respectability. Perhaps certain non-fiction works attempt to do the same. It doesn’t work similarly for poetry though”.

King of Bollywood - Shah Rukh Khan and the seductive world of Indian cinema - Anupama Chopra

It happened in India: The story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the Great Indian Consumer - Kishore Biyani

The last 1000 days of the British Empire - Peter Clarke

Inspiring anecdotes… from the lives of great men - J M Mehta

The Heirs of the Prophet Muhammad: And the roots of the Sunni-Shia Schism - Barnaby Rogerson

Invincible thinking: There is no such thing as defeat - Ryuho Okawa

Iran awakening - a first hand 3

look at her remarkable life -

Shirin Ebadi

The Messenger: The Meanings of the Life of Muhammad - Tariq Ramadan

Banker to the poor: the story of Grameen bank - Muhammad Yunus

Beyond the three seas: Travellers’ tales of Mughal India - Michael Fisher

Pirates and emperors old and new: International terrorism in the real world - Noam Chomsky

The Trouble With Physics: The rise of string theory, the fall of a science, and what comes next - Lee Smolin

An Inconvenient Truth: The planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it - Al Gore

SANGEETHA DEVI DUNDOO

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