“If the author couldn’t come up with a few intriguing words for the cover, what exactly should I expect in the following 450 pages?” asks Gretchen Hansen on Entertainment Weekly‘s “Pop Watch” blog. That’s why she’d give a pass to A Summer in Nantucket, but wouldn’t hesitate to pick up Nanfu**it. “There’s punning profanity. It’s edgy,” she says. “Parents are picketing to get the book off display shelves.” (Actually, they probably wouldn’t even have to, since B&N would probably pre-emptively decline to stock it, but that’s a different story.)
Hansen, who runs EW‘s fiction bestsellers list, then sifts through today’s hit literature to suss out some titling trends. Apparently throwing an astronomical body into the title works; also, self-help books should be encouraging and promise lots. (Gosh!) Let’s be honest, though: You can call a book just about anything, but as Emily Gould recently pointed out, “If something says ‘John Grisham’ on it, people will buy it absolutely no matter what.” You think anybody else could make it with a title like Playing for Pizza?