Comments on: Milquetoast: How Bland Titles Let Authors Act Like Kids and Undermine Democracy

By: Andrew Carr

Andrew Carr — Sun, 02 May 2010 01:24:22 +0000

Book Title Madness: How book titles that grab our attention are driving us nuts. http://bit.ly/aDZelL

By: Jacob Huebert

Jacob Huebert — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:22:08 +0000

But that’s not comparing like things. As far as I’ve noticed, academics today don’t give their books for an academic audience titles like this. They’re titles for polemical books for a popular audience, which have their place. (We should wish someone in Mises’s time had written their equivalent using his ideas!)

By: Stephan Kinsella

Stephan Kinsella — Sat, 01 May 2010 13:20:04 +0000

that faux-Socialism title is brilliant.

By: Michael J. Green

Michael J. Green — Sat, 01 May 2010 07:30:55 +0000

The disheartening thing for me is that all these books are being published. People read this crap?

And fiddlesticks! Mr. Coleman already renamed a libertarian classic using this formula. I find it quite fun.

The Road to Serfdom: Why Your Government Is Turning into a Totalitarian State
Defending the Undefendable: Why Pimps, Blackmailers and Profiteers are Heroes
Economic Sophisms: What Wealth Is and How Mercantilists are Destroying It
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: How Nations Grow Rich and Why The Government’s Policies are Impoverishing Us

By: Daniel Coleman

Daniel Coleman — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:47:01 +0000

Ah yes, but imagine if Mises or Rothbard were subjected to this in their day. Instead of the aptly-named treatise Socialism we might have Incalculable: Why the Socialists Are Wrong and How They're Destroying the Fatherland.I concede your broader point, of course: nobody would be this obnoxious about book titles if such titles didn't sell. I also should acknowledge the clear signal it gives consumers like me: I don't have to crack open 99% of these books to know that they simply aren't worth my time.

By: Jacob Huebert

Jacob Huebert — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:38:02 +0000

I find this post amusing, and many such books annoying,but books are made to be sold, and probably publishers have concluded that this sort of title sells books. (In many cases, I suspect the titles are entirely the publisher's idea, not the author's.) And why wouldn't this style of title sell books? You need something short that's reasonably catchy and easy to say, then you need a subtitle that concisely, provocatively says what the book's about. And probably some of the books are actually good. I haven't read Obamanomics, but I bet it's okay. The full title of Tom Woods's Meltdown is a little like that, and it's more than okay. Most political books will, of course, be bad, regardless of their title.

By: Libertarian Standard

Libertarian Standard — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:12:59 +0000

New blogpost: The Libertarian Stan » Milquetoast: How Bland Titles Let Authors Act Like Kids and Undermine Democracy | http://bit.ly/96Q0Xv