The fine folks a Lulu.com have devised a Book Title Analyzer--a scientific test that estimates your book's chance of being a bestseller based on its title. They devised this tool after studying statistics of bestsellers over the past 50 years. According to Lulu.com, the title analyzer proved 40% better than "guessing" at predicting bestseller status; in tests on 700 novels, it had a 70% "correct" ratio.

Did I analyze WAKING LAZARUS as a title? You bet your bippy, and I was pleasantly surprised to be told it has a 79.6% chance of becoming a bestseller.

Of course you know what I did after that. I immediately input "The Da Vinci Code" as a title, which told me it only had a 35.9% chance of being a bestseller.

Therein lies the danger of statistics.

However, it's nice to know my novel title at least has a greater "statistical" chance of capturing the public interest than TDC. (Let me fantasize a moment, won't you? ... Okay, end of fantasy.)

I'm not sure of the exact inner workings of the title analyzer, but it does seem to prefer figurative titles over literal titles; shorter titles over longer titles; and titles including the name of a place or person. Check out your own titles, and let me know what you get for scores.