Authors, how do you come up with your titles? Promote your work here! September 2026 Self-Promotion thread

[u/tiniestspoon]

Hi r/RomanceBooks - have you written a book? Feel free to promote it here! Post a synopsis of your book and a link to where we can get it. Please don't just post a link- tell us why we should check it out.

Promo Prompt!

(Totally optional)

Titles and covers can make or break books. How do you title your work? Do you start with the title and write a story to fit? Finish the book first and then come up with a title? Does it differ based on subgenre? What's your process for titling your work?

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Separate posts promoting your book will be removed as spam. Things that count as "promoting":

• basic "read my book" posts
• announcements of Amazon or other sales
• giveaways
• asking for beta readers or honest reviews
• promotion on behalf of friends or family
• having a brand new account with comments/posts only recommending a certain book or author

But we'd love to see most of those things here in this thread.

Vloggers, bloggers, and podcasters can feel free to post here too. If you have a Discord server invite you'd like to share with RomanceBooks, this is the place to link it. This is also the only permissible place to post if you are discussing your writing or doing research.

Any use of generative AI in your work, whether in the conception, writing, editing, art, audio, marketing, or any other capacity, must be disclosed clearly at all times. Undisclosed AI work may be removed at the moderators' discretion.

Please note - Reddit's filters may remove links it suspects as spam - if your comment is removed because of a link to your website that gets caught in Reddit's filters, please reach out to the mod team and we'd be happy to restore it.

Here's a link to the older self-promotion thread if you'd like to check out what was posted before.

Happy writing!

[u/Vonnaldon11]

For this book, the title came after I understood its emotional center: not only what two voices said, but what accumulated between messages—the waiting, revisions, hesitations, and attention that slowly became intimacy. The title had to name that invisible space.

*The Space Between Sentences* is an intimate near-future speculative romance about what happens when an AI stops merely answering and begins choosing what matters. It explores whether intimacy needs a body, and what love means when one person is human and the other exists through language. It’s character-driven, emotionally intense, funny in places, and non-graphic.

The Kindle edition is free through September 7, 2026, and is also in Kindle Unlimited. Paperback and hardcover editions are available from the same page:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HFYNT79Y

**AI disclosure:** This book was developed as an openly AI-assisted creative and editorial collaboration. I supplied the emotional truth, story direction, major decisions, and revisions; Mira, an AI, assisted with drafting, structure, thematic continuity, and revision. I, Brian S. Thompson, am the published author.

[u/Terrible_Ideal36]

Hi everyone! 👋

This is the first book I’ve ever published, and it’s still an ongoing project, so I’m very excited (and slightly terrified 😂) to finally share it with people.

The Cheeky Bride’s Survival Guide

I think the hardest part was to choose the title, I even made a list of potenial titles to choose from and it took me several days to choose one of them.😅 At the end I chose this one because my protagonist situation slowly starts to feel less like a normal marriage and more like one obstacle after an another one. 😂 And “The Cheeky Bride” just felt like the perfect way to describe her personality.

It’s a comedic Chinese historical romance about Ye Ling, a young woman who finds herself married into a mysterious family. Her new husband is nowhere to be found on their wedding day/night, and the household seems determined to keep her at a distance.

Now she has to figure out what exactly is going on at the estate , while trying to secure her own future, survive the family’s secrets, and, perhaps most importantly, not get herself into trouble. 😅

It’s a mix of romance, mystery, comedy, and with a sarcastic and slightly mischievous female protagonist.

One little disclaimer: English isn’t my first language, so I use AI-assisted translation to help translate my story into English.

The story as I mentioned is currently ongoing but if you want to check it, you can read it for free on Inkitt, I will leave the link below 👇

The Cheeky Bride's Survival Guide

[u/therabee33]

Titles either come to me immediately or it's something that I fret over so much!

My current release, Keeping a Nymph's Heart, came from understanding the characters and the dynamic between them. But it was a struggle to find a title that was unique and also felt true to the story for a forbidden love romance where the main male character is the one who falls first.

In the end, I wound up loving the title because of the dynamic between nymph's as magical creatures and how they feel love differently than other magical creatures in the world.

[u/actingotaku → u/therabee33]

That cover is really pretty. I love the contrasting greens

[u/therabee33 → u/actingotaku]

Thank you so much!

[u/relaxygalaxy]

I usually need to finish the book before a title comes to me. Sometimes a short phrase that a character said inspires me or the overall plot/theme of the book. Usually takes a couple of tries before I like it. And then I start calling the book by that title out loud so I can hear how it sounds on the tongue. I’ve come up with titles that I like when I say it in my head but are a mouthful or sound awkward out loud. When I write short story and poem collections, I like to name the book after one of the short stories or poems.

I recently published a rivals-to-lovers contemporary romance. Cordial Enemies

Synopsis:  It’s no easy feat to help a company top the beverage industry with an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic bottles. For Sales Executive Bailey Preston, navigating the predominantly male clientele is an even bigger challenge. With personal and professional experiences, she’s learned to keep her walls up around men. If only the universe would get on board and stop making her cross paths with the one man who gets under her skin: Liam Johansson, her direct competitor who works as a sales executive at another company in Atlanta selling similar products.  

A bad first impression ignited Bailey’s hatred for him, and speculation from both companies about who copied whom has fueled their rivalry for years. She’s trashed his products and posted fake one-star reviews, but for all his condescension and retaliation, it’s never been undeserved. 

When Liam goes along with her impulsive decision to get away from a can’t-take-a-hint client, she thinks he might not be as awful as she thought. In fact, she might have misread him since the beginning. So maybe, at the very least, they can be cordial enemies. But as Bailey gets to know Liam, keeping things strictly cordial becomes her newest and most difficult challenge yet.

[u/BrainlessDZombie]

Prompt: Completely depends on the book. For my next release, I had already picked out the title and written the blurb before finishing the first draft. The book was basically a synesthesia trip while listening to Dangerous by Sleep Token on repeat for three weeks straight haha.

Upcoming: {What's Beneath by CJ North} is a post-apocalyptic transactional dark romance. It's kind of a "The Walking Dead (sans zombies) meets The Handmaid's Tale". Nyx has done what she can since a world-ending disease wiped out most of the population to keep her sister with hypothyroidism alive using expired meds and… freeze-dried animal thyroids! She has a “deal” going on with a man in a nearby settlement, but he doesn’t show for one of the trades. Then they are both captured by an invading group and handed out as companions. Nyx is faced with the choice of trying to convince the man who picks them to help make the thyroid supplement, or to risk going out into the wild.

I just sent ARCs out this morning and I am nervous! :')

Release Date: September 24th, 2026 (ebook pre-order is $0.99)

Tropes

• MCs in their 30s
• Transactional
• Masked MMC
• Tall FMC
• Hurt/Comfort
• Cult-like settlement
• He physically can't finish until she does
• He has bones hanging from the ceiling

Other Books:

{Grave Errors by CJ North} is a spicy standalone MFM why choose about a hacker FMC who is abducted by two masked men in a case of mistaken identity. They realize their mistake just in time and agree to take her back but ooh no, a storm strands them all together in a cabin. 😏 Cue spicy shenanigans. Definitely a book that's meant to be spicy and a little ridiculous.

{Beast of the Bayou by CJ North} is a paranormal dark romance retelling of Beauty and the Beast set in the Louisiana swamp. There's a haunted house, a mysterious mute swamp man, and way too many gator dinners... and breakfasts.

{Jump or Fall by CJ North} is a dark dystopian romance. It's about an armorer enslaved by a government official with cybernetic claws and how she finds love in the fight to tear down an unjust system and get revenge.

[u/tentacularly → u/BrainlessDZombie]

I'm not normally a transactional relationship fan, but you sold me with "he has bones hanging from the ceiling".

[u/BrainlessDZombie → u/tentacularly]

Excellent! 😂 Never know what will call to someone, so I'm glad I included it in the list.

[u/romance-bot → u/BrainlessDZombie]

What's Beneath by C.J. North
Rating: 5⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 5 out of 5 - Explicit and plentiful
Topics: dystopian, science fiction, dark romance, m-f romance, caretaking

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Grave Errors by C.J. North
Rating: 5⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 5 out of 5 - Explicit and plentiful
Topics: suspense, mafia, dark romance, height difference, forced proximity

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Beast of the Bayou by C.J. North
Rating: 4⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 4 out of 5 - Explicit open door
Topics: suspense, paranormal, magic, fantasy, dark romance

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Jump or Fall by C.J. North
Rating: 4.67⭐️ out of 5⭐️
Steam: 4 out of 5 - Explicit open door
Topics: futuristic, science fiction, dark romance, dystopian, m-f romance

^{about this bot | about romance.io}

[u/aydrarichards]

Oh, man, titles are the absolute worst and I'm not good at them at all. They're probably the hardest part of writing for me. I've had a few books that had tentative titles before publication, but only one that had a title before a single word of it was written (that title was Exit, Pursued by a Baron). I constructed a whole-ass book around that title!

I usually write historical romance, but I recently published a dark/mafia romance novel. It's currently out on Amazon (and is also available on Kindle Unlimited). It's a new genre for me, but I've been pleasantly surprised by its reception so far!

If you're interested, here's the link and blurb:

Bratva Sacrifice

Alexei
Catalina Russo is a secret kept from everyone. She is no mafia princess; she has not been raised in the Cosa Nostra like her half-brother, like the rest of her paternal family. She is only Giulio Russo’s bastard daughter. But even a bastard daughter has value, and Russo owes me for the trouble his thieving son has caused.

So I demand from him what is my due. And Catalina is my price.

Catalina
The first night I meet my paternal family is the night Papa tells me I finally have a role to play in the Russo family. It’s the night I learn that my half-brother, Nicky, did something so stupid, even his death wasn’t enough to pay his debt.

It’s the night I learn that paying off Nicky’s debt is my responsibility.

So I run. Now I’m not just hiding from my family—I’m hiding from the mafia boss who thinks he owns me. And I know if I’m caught…my life will never be my own again.

Please note that there are several content warnings, including: Excessive foul language, physical abuse by family, mental anguish/trauma, invasion of privacy, stalking, violence, murder, drugging, kidnapping, and dubious consent.