Title best practices

• Enter your title exactly as it reads on the cover of your book. The title field will show your book’s title on the book’s detail page in the Amazon website.
• Ensure your title is exactly the same for your paperback, hardcover, and eBook versions. This is how they are linked together on a single detail page.
• Don’t add anything from the following list of prohibited items in the title field:
• Repeating generic keywords like "notebook," "journal," "gifts," "books," etc.
• Unauthorized reference to other titles or authors
• Unauthorized reference to a trademarked term
• Reference to sales rank (e.g., "bestselling")
• Reference to advertisements or promotions (e.g., "free")
• Only Punctuation (e.g. "!!!!!!!!")
• Using only "unknown", "n/a", "na", "blank", "none", "null", "not applicable"
• HTML tags

Subtitles

A subtitle is an optional secondary title that contains additional information about the content of your book. Together, your title and subtitle must be 200 characters or less. Your subtitle should adhere to the same guidelines as your title above.

For example, Mary Shelley gave her most famous novel the title “Frankenstein”; with a subtitle of “The Modern Prometheus”. Her book can be called and is recognizable by both names. By using the subtitle “The Modern Prometheus”, she references the Greek Titan as a hint of the novel’s themes.

Editions

An edition is a particular version of your book. The edition number tells readers whether the book is an original version or an updated version. Books that change frequently or go through annual updates (such as textbooks) need to have edition numbers. If this is the first time you have published this book and you anticipate future editions, enter the numeral 1. If the book was previously published and the version you are publishing contains significant changes, enter the numeral 2 (and so on).

Each time you make significant changes to your book, it is considered a new edition. Significant changes include updates to the core book details (author name, cover, title, etc.) and manuscript updates that result in page count changes by more than 10%. Updates to certain book details, sometimes called metadata, also require a new edition. These book details include, title, primary author name, ISBN, trim size, and ink and paper type.

To create a new edition of your book, repeat the process to create a new title and include the appropriate number in the Edition number field so that readers know that the book is an updated version of a previously published book. Small changes such as typos or capitalization fixes do not require a new edition number.

Can I update my book’s title and/or edition?

You won’t be able to update your book’s title and/or edition once your book has been published, but you can publish it with the updates as a new title. See our help page to create a book. When submitting it as a new book, you're required to include the following disclaimer at the top of the description field:

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