As work on the sequel to Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It proceeds at a glacial pace, my thoughts turn to the series as a whole and what it should be called. Considering that the first two things that draw me to a book are 1) the cover, and 2) the name, I want to make sure the series name is just as catchy as the book names themselves.
So to recap you, the two books currently in the series are Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It (published) and Chasing Nonconformity (not yet published). The genre is young adult space adventure / romance / humor. And now I need a series name.
The obvious choice is to base the name off of “Imminent Danger”, since that’s the first book in the series. But that could look a bit silly. Imagining browsing through Amazon and coming across this name:
Imminent Danger And How to Fly Straight into It (Imminent Danger, #1)
Seems a bit redundant. Then again, that sort of thing happens to Twilight, Divergent, The Hunger Games … lots of popular series. Hmmm …
Time to draw inspiration from popular book series! Let’s see which popular YA series have “series names” that differ from the name of the first book in the series …
- The Mortal Instruments (first book = City of Bones)
- Caster Chronicles (first book = Beautiful Creatures)
- The Infernal Devices (first book = Clockwork Angel)
- Percy Jackson and the Olympians (first book = The Lightning Thief)
- House of Night (first book = Marked)
- Lunar Chronicles (first book = Lunar)
- Gemma Doyle (first book = A Great and Terrible Beauty)
Time to analyze! Weeeeeeeeeee …
So it seems like most YA series go with whatever the name of the first book is. Probably makes life easier. The series that don’t do that seem to draw their names from either the protagonist, important items in the story, or … well, whatever the heck “House of Night” means. The word “Chronicles” also seems popular.
Either I go with something slightly dull, like The Imminent Danger Series, or I spice it up and capture the essence of the book with something a bit more vague, like The Lamri Chronicles or The Reluctant Xenophile Saga or Abducted! (I quite enjoy the gratuitous exclamation mark in the last one).
Hmm … what do you guys think? What’s a good series name for my fledgling YA space adventure / romance / humor series? All suggestions welcome, no matter how silly!
Unrelated media of the day:
I may have already shared this last Christmas, but whatever. It’s a lovely Christmas medley shot in a very cool way, so listen/watch and enjoy!
Michelle Proulx - Author 
Inkheart, Looking Glass Wars, and Fablehaven are others that have series named after the first book. Though with a long title, you might not want to go for that. What about naming it after the main character? The Eris Miller or Eris Series?
Hmmm … it’s an idea, but “The Eris Series” doesn’t have much oomph, at least in my opinion. One great thing about “Twilight” is that it’s such a short name — only two syllables. Maybe I should come up with something that’s only a few syllables …
Is there a central planet or species or item?
Umm … not really. I mean, half the point is that they fly around the galaxy to different planets, meeting different species, and doing different things. They use the lamri to achieve interstellar flight, so that could work. Or I could just call it SHWOOP (the sound the spaceships make when they travel) and be done with it 😀
You know, I kind of like the idea of the SHWOOP Saga.
Catchy, right? Or we could do SHWOOP Chronicles … but “Saga” has a more epic feel.
Extremely relevant: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shwoop
Wow. I did not know that. Could lead to an odd fanbase. 😉
Tough call between SHWOOP Saga or SHWOOP Chronicles. Both sound great.
Or we could go with something really epic, like SHWOOP WARS.
That does sound epic. 🙂
I like “Eris In Space”. Simple, direct, and to the point. You could also go with “Chaos In Space” because Eris is the goddess of chaos.
But then, I have “The Book Of Lost Doors”, which is kind of pretentiously ambiguous. (Oddly enough, no one have ever asked me what, if anything, it means.)
Chaos in Space … interesting. Definitely has potential. It kind of sounds like a soap opera, or like a zany sitcom or something. I suppose the books are fairly zany …
Or you could call it the “Imminent” series and follow up “Imminent Danger” with “Imminent Nonconformity”, “Imminent Domain”, “I Was A Teenage Imminent”, “The Fellowship Of The Imminent” and The Sensuous Imminent”.
Ha! Awesome. “Raiders of the Imminent Arc”
Wow that’s a tough one. With any title or book name, I always type it into Amazon’s search and see what shows up. If there’s another title that’s similar that pops up, I discard the title immediately. I want something that’s unique.
Or, the other way of looking at it would to view that as a good thing. If a potential types in a word for another book and they may also see your book in the search listings.
But wow, it sure is a tough decision. Because once you’ve picked one, it’s immortalized into history! Good luck! 🙂
Hmm … excellent point with the Amazon search. I’ve done that with individual book titles, but didn’t even think of doing it for a series! But also a good point about similar names maybe drawing readers to your book … ahhh! Definitely something I’ll have to think about. Thanks for the luck 🙂
I’d like to just start out by saying that the unrelated media was flippin’ WOW. Moving on…
I’d stay away from “Chronicles”, for as you’ve noted, it’s already everywhere. “Eris in Space” isn’t bad, though “Eris…IN SPAAACE!” is both more humorously dramatic *and* incorporates that gratuitous exclamation mark you fancy. …Yeah, actually, I would definitely look twice at a series thusly titled.
Hahaha. I’m worried that people would have a hard time Googling that though. They’d be like “I know it involves space … and there was a dot dot dot … and a lot of As …”
Well *longsuffering sigh*, I suppose it could always be simplified to “Eris IN SPACE”… though that just makes it look like someone forgot to all-caps “ERIS”. Hmm. Back to the drawing board…
I guess I’m boring, but I like ‘Imminent Danger Series’ best, ha ha. xD You don’t have to put it on the first book, since a lot of books in which the series is based off the first title don’t. It’s generally accepted that ‘Imminent Danger etc etc’ is probably in the ‘Imminent Danger’ series, you know? But I like it because it’s so apt, like… there’s imminent danger constantly. xD Although I suppose that doesn’t say much about space. BUT KEEP COMING UP WITH IDEAS. I’ll be happy to vote if there’s a vote later. xDD
Ack! I knew I forgot something! A poll! Well, my ideas were pretty bad, so I guess I should come up with some good names before starting a poll, lol. So your vote would be for the Imminent Danger series? It’s not terrible, and it does evoke the whole “AHHH DANGER!” thing, which is good. Hmm …
LOL. But you love polls! I’m sure you’ll get one sorted once you’ve figured out your options. 🙂 And yeah, but I’m totally open to other suggestions, if you get something amazing! I’m just always worried that if you name it something totally unrelated, people won’t remember the name of the series. Like the Midnight one–what did that have to do with the title of the book?? I would have forgotten it completely.
Ahh, that is indeed true. Don’t want it totally unrelated, or else you get that awkward situation where someone’s like “I love the Kingkiller Chronicles” and you’re like “I’ve never heard of that” and then they point at your book shelf, where you have the entire series, and they go “But it’s literally right there” and you go “Oh! You mean The Name of the Wind series? I didn’t know it had a real name!” and then they laugh at you and judge you and you have to bludgeon them with dull objects to get them to be quiet. Don’t want that!!!
NOT AT ALL! xDDD
But yes, excellent story of how this is quite relevant.
Imminent Danger sounds good to me. Chasing Nonconformity (Amidst Imminent Danger)… I think shorter series names are more memorable.
Another vote for Imminent Danger! And excellent point about a shorter series name … although in that case maybe I should just call it the “Eris” series after my main character and be done with it.
I think you need to make sure the series titles reflects the humour in the series. So just “Imminent Danger” might sound too serious (sort of like a Tom Clancy novel). How about “SHWOOP! Tales of the Reluctant Xenophile”, or “SHWOOP! Eris’s Journey through Space”?
Ha! That’s fun! Although that might make the series sound like kids books, and that would turn off potential older readers. Because although the books are fun, there’s also action and danger and romance and so on, so we don’t want people thinking they’re for kids.
Ha, find me a 10-year-old who can define “reluctant xenophile”! (Not counting you when you were 10. Or Alisse, lol.)
No no no … see, “SHWOOP! Tales of a Reluctant Xenophile” has the SHWOOP with the exclamation mark, which is sketchy. Whereas something like “The Shwoop Chronicles” sounds all legit and stuff. Hey, what about “Astral Wanderer”? That’s epic sounding.
“SHWOOP: Tales of an Astral Wanderer”
Still has the problem of being a very long name …
“Percy Jackson and the Olympians” is pretty long! Perhaps you should decide on your maximum acceptable character count, and we can work within that, lol.
Series titles are so tricky. In my genre (romance) they sometimes come off as…well…corny!
Hehehe. To be fair, most romance book titles come off as corny. My favorite is when they’re sexy puns! Ahhhh, I could read romance book titles all day … 😀
Uh-oh, now you got me thinking… my Whiskey Delta series is so named because… well… Is there an overriding theme that connects them all in your mind?
Well, I mean, the overriding theme is kind of Eris growing up, finding love, and figuring out who she wants to be … all set in a backdrop of space travel and space battles and crazy aliens and whatnot. But it’s also a deliberately funny series, so I’m worried about making the series name too serious and underscoring the humor. Hmmm …
Yeah… I see the trouble. I really need to read it! I bought a copy back during one of your promotions, but that stack is so freaking high!
Well, acquiring it is the first step, lol. Thanks for buying it, by the way!!! And by all means take your time reading it. Lord knows I have a stack of ebooks a mile high that I’m supposed to be reading and reviewing right this very second. Siiiiiiigh.
Not sure if this was one was meant to be a joke or a title, but I like this one – The Reluctant Xenophile Saga. It just kinds of stands out. Good luck.
Thanks 🙂 And it isn’t a joke — I was actually planning on calling the first book that — “The Reluctant Xenophile” — until it was pointed out to me that my target audience probably wouldn’t know what half those words meant. But it’s always been a contender for series name 🙂
What about something to do with “moving” since you have “flying” and “chasing” in your titles?
Hmm true. That is a lot of action words, isn’t it? Very interesting idea. Moving … motion … shifting … something. I’ll have to think it over. Thanks!!!
No worries. Of course, you’d have to stick with action words in all of the series’ titles…though I think that’d be pretty cool. 😉
Good luck deciding! Picking titles is the hardest. I am terrible at it so I will do you the favor of not suggesting any. LOL
Hahaha, no worries. I’m fairly terrible at naming things myself, hence the post 🙂 I’m going to stick with “Imminent Danger” series for the moment, but hopefully I’ll come up with something more inspired later on!