Begin with a peg to hang this story on. Shelby Steele, a prolific writer on race relations in America and a fellow of Stanford University, wrote a book earlier this year, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Barack Obama And Why He Can’t Win. Many authors have made incorrect conclusions but only a few have had the courage to make a prediction in a title that could be directly contradicted. Probably because Steele had the guts to say what he felt, the publisher went along and published the book. But this is just one half of the story, Steele said, after the book bombed: the publisher slapped the sub-title on his own when Obama was trailing Hillary Clinton in the early days. Sub-titles are marketing devices, he said, and he had always opposed them, as could be seen in his previous books that only carried a title.

Some questions arise. Who provides the title and/ or the sub-title — the author or the publisher? In case of differences, to what extent is the publisher justified in pushing his opinion because he is under overriding pressure to sell his book? (Such differences often crop up because the publisher has not only to keep marketing prospects in mind but also needs to make the design and layout attractive within the space that is allotted for the cover.) Finally, why are sub-titles sometimes necessary for non-fiction books?

Under normal circumstances, it is the author who makes suggestions for the title, but quite often the editor changes these after discussions with the author — which means it is a joint decision. The editor has two considerations: the main title should be short and sweet; second, it should be marketable. For instance, George Orwell wanted to call 1984 as The Last Man in Europe — it was changed to the simple 1984, or what the world would be like in the foreseeable future. Editors also know that the title must be trendy, that is, it should reflect the current mood of the book-buyer. In other words, people have biases, and mostly people buy books that they already agree with; very few want to buck the trend.

But it isn’t just catchiness of the title that makes for success; typography, the design and layout of the title on the cover and the title-page matter a great deal. What first attracts the potential buyer is the title, which must be short so that the typographer can ‘play around’ with it on the page. It cannot be long-winded, not merely because it leaves little room for the designer to manoeuvre, but also because our attention span is overloaded with all the new titles that are now being published.

Are sub-titles necessary? In many cases, they are because buyers want to know in a flash what the book is all about: they don’t have the time to browse or even to run through the flap matter. Besides, everything merges with everything else now and no story is ever told as if it is the only one. So publishers make use of the sub-title to identify the scope of the book for the reader. Steele’s original title, A Bound Man, could have meant anything to the buyer; the sub-title was necessary to point out that it referred to Obama and the whole gamut of race relations in America.