Did you ever start a band as a teenager?  I am willing to bet hard cash that if you did, you spent more time deciding on the perfect band name than picking up an instrument.

There's an amusing band-name-generator going around at the moment that suggests you pair the colour of your underwear with the last thing you ate ('Black Marmite') - what would your band name be?

So what about your book title?  I tell authors to stick to the same title during the submission process as agencies often log books in by title so it's not helpful to have changed that half-way through.  I also say that it doesn't matter that much what your book is called because there's a good chance that if it gets to publication it will get changed.

There are two exceptions to this - your title can make a difference if it's very bad or very good.  

A very bad title will give the reader preconceptions that they may not be able to shake off.  What makes a bad title? Anything melodramatic or absolute, or that borrows heavily from previous books - such as 'The Michaelangelo Code' or 'Desperate Times'.

We'd all like to know what the perfect title is - and that's a lot harder to identify.  I've found that quirky titles - where the book lives up to the title - do very well, such as 'Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe'.

There's a very amusing site, Better Book Titles,  which re-titles books to accurately convey the contents, I particularly liked 'if you give a pig a windmill, he'll pursue absolute power'.  Slightly at a tangent, but also very funny are Funny Foreign Film titles.  Continuing the pig theme, 'The Happy Dumpling-To-Be Who Talks and Solves Agricultural Problem' is my favourite!

What's your title and what made you choose it?