How PickFu Helped Me: It Can Help Your Book Title and Cover Decisions

PickFu helped me to determine my title and cover by surveying over 100 users.

Are you pulling your hair out because you don’t know what cover or title to use for your book? That’s because, your friend says X but you think Y and your partner/spouse says Z. It’s confusing I know. There is a simple solution. Use PickFu!

PickFu helped me to determine the name and cover of my book, Finding Soul: From Silicon Valley to Africa.

I couldn’t decide on four titles for my Africa book. Going in, I favoured Option A: F*IT, I’m going to Africa, but I knew it would offend some people. I also knew other people liked Option B: From Silicon Valley to Africa, Losing Ego, Finding Happiness, but it wasn’t as catchy.

Title options:

A: F*IT, I’m Going to Africa  (47 Points)

B: Silicon Valley to Africa: Losing Ego, Finding Happiness (53)

C: Immersed in Africa: Less Ego, More Happiness (16)

D: Forget It, I’m Going to Africa (27)

How it works:

Seems pretty close to make a decision by a single glance. The PickFu methodology solves this by a method called Ranked Choice. PickFu Ranked Polls require a majority of votes to win. If no option receives a majority of 1st-place votes, the option(s) with the fewest votes is eliminated. Those eliminated options have their votes reassigned based on the respondents’ next preferences. This process, known as Instant Runoff Voting, continues until a majority winner emerges.

If I chose the one with the most votes then my original favorite, Option A would have one. But by removing the lowest vote count in round 1 and round 2, I learned that those users preferred Option B. There were two other key factors that helped me make my decision. First, the voters left insightful comments and I quickly learned that I would offend a large swath of people by choosing A. I also learned what about the title they liked particularly “Finding… and the juxtaposition of Silicon Valley and Africa.” Next, I learned about the demographics of the people and my target consumer. Most of my target consumers, college-educated white-collar workers from 20-40, liked Option B.

With that in mind, I tweaked the title and came up with Finding Soul: From Silicon Valley to Africa.

The cover:

Next PickFu helped me with the cover. I picked two choices.

Option B won by 2%. But I didn’t choose it. It was basically a coin flip. Again, the comments helped me decide what to do. Key observations included:

• The strong red color on Option A were disliked by voters.
• Voters didn’t like the multiple faces on the left side
• Voters did like text and layout
• A lot more women liked the left than the right.

So based on that we changed the color to an orange shade, reduced it to two faces, and added pictures of the African terrain. Check it out on Amazon.