Fussing over titles

[mrissa]

I was talking to Michelle about my books, and she brought up an association that has worried me before. timprov suggested that AKICILJ was a good principle to use, but it seems to me that it's opinion more than knowledge. So here we go, and please feel free to elaborate in comments:

[Poll #423689]

Note: please do not get abusive about titles. I have an acquaintance who said things to me (about a different title) like, "Did you pick that title because you want people to ignore your book?" Behavior like that is one reason this person counts as an acquaintance and not as a friend right now. If you think Sampo is a horrible title and you'd never read a book of that name, there are far better ways to express that sentiment.

Comments

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

To me, a sampo is a Japanese word for a stroll or walk (also "sanpo").
*G*

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Also, if I liked the first book, the second book's title couldn't matter less.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the Second Book of Three thing. Marymary (http://www.pantoum.org/) and I have had more than one discussion of how unfair I think it is that poets get to have untitled poems and fiction writers do not vs. how useful she thinks titles are for adding that extra little twist to the reader's experience.

My main problem is when series titles and covers are too similar, and then I find myself trying to refer to them by saying, "And then when they got to...you know, thinger...the one about the astronomical references or whatever...."

AKICILJ: All Knowledge Is Contained In LiveJournal.

A takeoff on AKICIF, All Knowledge Is Contained In Fandom.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Marymary and I have had more than one discussion of how unfair I think it is that poets get to have untitled poems and fiction writers do not vs. how useful she thinks titles are for adding that extra little twist to the reader's experience.

And then there's late singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, whose debut album features songs named No Name #1, No Name #2, No Name #3, and No Name #4. (No Name #5 shows up two albums later.) They're good songs too.

I did make the connection with Little Black Sambo--that is, I could see why you were posting a poll even before I got to the question about LBS--though I also am a person who would give a little leeway in the title of a second book of a series. I don't suppose there's an alternate spelling you could use? Or a longer phrase with Sampo that would make it clear you were drawing from a different tradition?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, the spelling is extremely clear. I can go with a longer title that doesn't involve the word Sampo at all but instead something reminiscent of the forging of the Sampo (poll probably to follow!), but nothing like Ilmarinen and the Sampo really applies in this case.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

I'm now imagining the sequel to Hammered sprinkled throughout with Lloyd Alexander references.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Although I'll shamefully admit that I only know what a Sampo is because I watched Mystery Science 3000 rip apart a movie that had a Sampo, and I wanted to go look up Sampo to find out the real deal on it.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Hey! That's not shameful! That was a great episode.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

But good horrid! It cracked me up every time I saw it. And the commentary was soooo good.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I'd come across the word sampo a long time ago, but when I found it was was described to me as meaning 'friend' and it wasn't Finnish. I think there's yet another meaning to it, but websearching on it now provides enough cruft that I don't feel like wading into it to see what it was I'm remembering. You're probably aware of it if it's for real anyway, 'cause you're a thorough kinda person!

I have a difficult time imagining the non-psychotically obsessed seeing the name Sampo and thinking of 'Little Black Sambo'. You're gonna have to wade through a veritable sea of computer geeks who assume it's about monitors before you get to one of those people.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Sea of computer geeks. Mmmmm.

Sorry, drifted off there for a minute. Anyway, I'm not worrying too much about its meaning in other languages, because it's important enough as just a Finnish thing that I don't feel like I have to worry about the Japanese going for walks around my book or anything like that.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Little Black Sambo is a perennial librarianship example. For example, is it OK to get Julius Lester's version--called, I think, Sam and the Tigers--because even though it's not at all offensive, just knowing its source might offend people? Is it OK to have Little Black Sambo somewhere other than the children's collection, because of historical significance? That sort of thing. So I'm surprised to hear that it might not be the bonfire of potential controversy I've been led to see it as.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised that a profession would use something as an example of controversy consistently enough to give it greater significance. I doubt that anybody cares much about Madonna's Sex any more, but I could see where community responses to that might be instructive to a novice librarian.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Wow. That first paragraph is incomprehensible.

Let me try that again.

I had come across the word a long time ago, but I was told that it meant 'friend' and I don't remember it being Finnish. So, that other meaning may or may not be out there, but my web searching on it turned up too much crap to wade through. I assume you know about it if the other meaning is out there.

(please mentally substitute the above paragraph for my original first paragraph. I've turned off my doofus plugin, and hopefully I'm now writing in an approximation of english.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is not a reason to feel guilty. Almost nobody knows much about Finnish mythology. For me, this is a good thing: keeps the tradition I'm drawing on in these books from being "*yawn* not another Kalevala fantasy...."

[baronlaw.livejournal.com]

It actualy more called to mind Sambo's restuarants.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

When you first wrote Sampo, I did think of that other book, but at the same time, I knew that was with a b and yours was with a p. So... I'd think most people have that realization quickly? I hope?

Tough decision, M'ris. And I agree that the generic fantasy novel names are best avoided. I read a fantasy trilogy while I was on vacation, and since we were traveling light and for a long period of time, I left the trilogy on the book-exchange shelf in a hotel... and when I got back, I couldn't even figure out what the trilogy was, let alone remember the titles. The author had written two other completely generic and utterly interchangeably titled fantasy trilogies, all with variations of the words "cloud," "sword" and "shadow." Madness. I'd rather read Sampo than another King of the Sword-Bearing Cloud-Shadow's Daughters.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The Dragon of the Dream Star Dancers, yes.

I have this fear about Midnight Sun Rising, which is the half-drafted stand-alone third book in this series. Title may be too generic. May require more computerness.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Titles aren't often negatives for me (only if they're really, really silly). But a better-than-average title will get me to take a second look at something that I'd otherwise have shunned.

[platypus]

Titles are a significant part of what makes me pick up a book or click through a link recommending it. I almost invariably come upon the second/third/fourth book of a series before I've encountered the first one, so I don't think the importance declines as a series goes on. Sure, if the first book was good and by some miracle I found and read it, I'm a built-in audience for any future books, odd titles or bad cover art or anything else in the world be damned. But I'd certainly not recommend counting on that circumstance.

As for Sampo, it's not a word I've encountered before. While it reminds me a little bit of Sambo, simply because I don't have anything else to connect it to, I wouldn't find that off-putting. It's neutral; on its own, it wouldn't make me pick up or click through to investigate more, but it wouldn't discourage me either. I have a preference for multi-word titles and titles I can immediately understand, but it wouldn't *dis*courage me.

[platypus]

Also, I repeat myself and repetitively make the same points twice when I don't re-read what I have already written.

[wshaffer.livejournal.com]

I like Sampo as a title, but the sampo story about why the sea is salty was a favorite of mine as a kid. I always sort of wanted a sampo. Of course, just because I like it doesn't mean that it's actually a good title for most of your target audience.

Is the sampo mentioned or introduced at all in the first book? If it's something that readers of the first book will be familiar with by the time they get to the second book, then I really think it's not a problem at all.

On a rather unrelated note, I liked Little Black Sambo as a kid, too. I remember having a long discussion with my parents about its racial overtones, though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, the Sampo(s) is/are all over Thermionic Night.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I picked "not at all" on the title, but that's not quite true. I only picked that because you didn't have an option of "Only if it's really, really stupid." I can't think of a real life example right now, but it's possible that a book's title could be so silly, so annoying, that I wouldn't read a sequel to a book I enjoyed. I think that a title that zeroed in on my least favorite or even disliked part of a previous book would probably cause me to avoid it until I could check it out of the library.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

to avoid it until I could check it out of the library.

Snrk. Oh, the horror! Waiting to get it from the library!

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Heh. I meant, rather than being willing to spend money on it, or feeling any urgency to read it right away. Silly monkey.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I know what you meant, but it still makes you a pretty big book ho.

Which puts you in good company around here.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Luckily for me, cadithial is an even bigger book ho than I am, so I can usually borrow any book I'm iffy about from him.

[palinade.livejournal.com]

Every time I read your title, I think of my DVD player. The company is Sampo. It's Japanese and a region-free player.

I'm not at all familiar with Finnish myth so I wouldn't know what Sampo meant until I'd read the cover copy (representing a person who would just randomly browse the shelves). I'm not a fan of the weird use of "a novel" as a subtitle (because if it's not a novel, *gasp* we might never know what it was doing in the fiction section of the bookstore!).

OTOH, if Sampo is a hugely important part of the novel--it represents a major theme, character, place, or mythic image--then I'd leave it. Gosh knows many didn't know what Gibson's Idoru meant or even Le Guin's Tehanu and those books are perfectly reasonable and fine.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It is a hugely important part of the novel: it is the central goal of the major characters. But there are other important parts of the novel, so I don't know; we'll see, I guess.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

yes, mrissa, I know what a Sampo is. But then, I'm a bit of a mythology geek.

As for the Little Black Sambo thing, I admit that it did cross my mind that it could be an issue the first time I saw the title of your novel.

When it comes to titles, I don't really get put off my an od dsounding title, as long as I like the writer's work in general.

BTW, I don't know if you come across this or not, but there's an article at Edicott-studio.com that touches on Finnish Myth and the Sampo.

http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/rrfinnish.html

Suffixes

[mkille.livejournal.com]

Finnish is agglutinative, no? So you could add a (grammatical, natch) suffix or two to "Sampo"--it wouldn't change the what-the-heck-is-that factor, but I doubt people would think Sambo. And what-the-heck-is-that is not the worst thing for genre titles.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Ok, so I didn't read the comments all that thoroughly, but have you actually said yet what (a) sampo is, for those of us that are still clueless? The best I can come up with is "Finnish mythology something-or-other".

As for titles, I have to admit, they do play a large part in what I initially pick up to read. If I came across a book titled "Sampo" without knowing the author, I probably wouldn't even read the dust jacket, just because "Sampo" doesn't give me, personally, any clue as to what the book would be about. ("Midnight Sun Rising", on the other hand, probably would get picked up.) But if it were part of a series that I liked, it wouldn't matter what the title was.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

The great thing is, that's the best the Finns can come up with, too.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't yet, but I will soon.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Never heard of Sampo before I started reading your blog, but it has come up elsewhere since.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

While a number of people who have no other reference for "Sampo" may eventually think of "Little Black Sambo", I think considerably fewer will think there's an actual connection. The human mind is after all primarily an associational machine, so it *will* find associations, no matter how far it has to go.

[greykev.livejournal.com]

If I didn't know you, and hadn't read the first book I'd probably pass Sampo by. Sampo; the magic mill would at least get me to read the back cover, and soemthing like Forging a Magic Mill would be intrigueing to me even if the cover copy sucked.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, but it's no longer really a mill, nor forged, nor are those very good metaphors for what's going on, so I'm going to have to go with something else if not Sampo.