The chapters are the heart of your book. If they are unfocused, disorganized, have boring titles, lack headings, get off to a slow start or suffer from other critical defects, readers grow restless, begin thinking of other matters and soon abandon your book. The guidelines in this section will help you avoid these mistakes.

Failure to Make Chapter Titles Understandable and Interesting: dreaming up good chapter titles takes a bit of effort but this pays off big in terms of drawing readers into your book and helping them understand what it is all about. On the other hand, overly literal, academic, obscure, or trivializing chapter titles can turn readers off before they start reading. Remember, most books are still sold in bookstores, where most readers glance at a non-fiction book’s table of contents to determine whether it seems interesting.

Literal titles like “The History of Iraq” lack warmth and excitement. Re-title the same material, “From Ancient Babylon to Modern Baghdad,” and you lend the promise of colorful, engrossing material to your chapter title. Or combine the two versions for one that possesses both color and literalness: “From Ancient Babylon to Modern Baghdad: A Short History of Iraq.” In short, Do not call your first chapter, “What This Book Will Do.”

Instead call it, “Freedom from Nightmares at Last!” Academic-sounding titles truly confer the kiss of death on a book, as far as reaching a wide audience of typical readers. Consider the title “An Anthropological Consideration of the Growth of Nicotine Addiction Among Women.” Most readers will assume a book with weighty chapter titles like that is written only for academics and will look for another that seems written more on the level of the average person.