Naming the Books

I think I’ve finally settled on the brand I’ll use for the books and book series I’m writing and will continue to write going forward. That said, I do need a bit of help clarifying the exact names.

I mentioned previously that I liked the notion of “pocket” and “guidebooks,” and the general travel theme, using the Rick Steves series of travel books as an obvious inspiration. With that in mind, I looked at whether terms like “Field Guide” (for full length books) or “Pocket Field Guide” (for “mini-books”) were in uses as series names for major tech books. After all, I also don’t want to step on any traditional publishers’ toes and use terms like “Secrets” or “In & Out”.

They’re not. So my basic plan is to use “Field Guide” for the full-length titles and “Pocket Field Guide” for the mini-books.

The question is what form this would take.

Using three representative books as examples—Amazon Cloud Player Book, Xbox Music Book and Windows Phone Book—I started looking at how these might fit into the brand names and what the actual book titles would be.

One obvious approach is to use my name in there, though I’m worried that makes the titles too long and puts the topic too far back in the title:

Paul Thurrott's Field Guide to Windows Phone 8
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Field Guide to Xbox Music
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Field Guide to Amazon Cloud Player

(Here, “to” might be replaced with “for,” as in “Paul Thurrott's Field Guide for Windows Phone 8.”)

Two obvious shorter variants emerge as well:

Field Guide to Windows Phone 8
Pocket Field Guide to Xbox Music
Pocket Field Guide to Amazon Cloud Player

Windows Phone 8 - A Field Guide
Xbox Music - A Pocket Field Guide
Amazon Cloud Player - A Pocket Field Guide

(You could tack “by Paul Thurrott” on to the end of any of these if the absence of my name bugs you. But I think I prefer shorter over longer titles.)

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. Thoughts and feedback are appreciated. 

Update: I’ve gotten enough feedback about the brands to reconsider the use of my name in the title.

Maybe…

Paul Thurrott's Guide to Windows Phone 8
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Guide to Xbox Music
Paul Thurrott's Pocket Guide to Amazon Cloud Player