Even authors who write about how to make decisions more effectively need assistance when making a decision about their book title ideas. One such author took the question to PickFu to find out which of two titles appealed the most to readers.

Option A reads, “The Decision Making Blueprint: A Simple Guide to Better Choices in Life and Work.” This title is concise and directly tells the reader what they’re getting.

Option B reads, “The Decision Making Blueprint: A Simple Guide to Effective Thinking, Smart Choices, and Better Results.” This longer title lays out in detail what readers will learn once they read the book.

Can you guess which one won?

And the winner is…Option A! With a score of 62 to Option B’s 38, Option A won in a statistically significant way.

Let’s find out why respondents loved Option A so much more than Option B.

When judging book title ideas, simpler is better

Many poll respondents stumbled mentally over the longer title in Option B. One respondent said, “[Option] A is easy to read and the words flow, so the meaning hits my brain and I understand it. I don’t have to stop and think what the heck [it] is talking about.”

Other respondents agreed. Many glanced past Option B and didn’t even finish reading it because the density of the title made them lose interest.

Option A is simple and short, and readers appreciate brevity in a book title.

Don’t state the obvious in your book title ideas

While Option B might appear to give more information because it is longer, respondents generally found that the extra words didn’t add a lot of meaning to the title. One respondent said, “The extraneous text in choice ‘B’ is kinda redundant — if you think effectively and make smart choices, better results are a given.”

And even though Option A is shorter, it provides all the information necessary to make a potential reader pick up the book. “It seems to me that [Option A] may provide some kind of blueprint to balance life/work issues,” said one male. He inferred this from the shorter title alone. Like other respondents, he seemed to find that Option A was more specific and informational than Option B despite being shorter.

Key takeaways

Shorter titles can be easier to read and more likely to catch the attention span of your average reader. You don’t need to sacrifice quality, but you do need to pack high-quality words into a powerful title.

An easy way to do this is to write out the longer title and then trim it as much as possible. Come up with a few variations. Once you have two or three that you really like, create your own PickFu poll to find out which one appeals most to readers!