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To think no one would read this book?

58 replies

peycho · 29/11/2022 19:32

My best friend has borderline personality disorder. She thinks she is going to do well with a book with this title -

Borderline personality disorder: what I wish I knew - a female perspective

Please tell her no one will be interested. She is unknown also.

OP posts:
thelobsterquadrille · 29/11/2022 20:19

peycho · 29/11/2022 19:55

What about - 'borderline personality disorder - what I wish I could understand'

That doesn't make sense as a title.

"Borderline Personality Disorder - What I wish I'd Known" would make more sense.

diamondpony80 · 29/11/2022 20:20

peycho · 29/11/2022 19:55

What about - 'borderline personality disorder - what I wish I could understand'

No definitely not. To me that’s saying you have questions about it that you don’t know the answers to. It may be true of course, but won’t make someone who wants to learn about the topic want to read your book. You need to come across as an authority, not someone who is confused.

MartiniFlan · 29/11/2022 20:35

No, it sounds pretty boring; unfortunately I think a fair few writers fail to realise that having a mental illness doesn't immediately imbue them with any great creative skill.

LadyMarmaladeAtkins · 29/11/2022 20:53

Sounds fair enough to me. Depends if it is interesting, well written, and so on whether people will want to read her book on it but people write books about various brain-related (MH, ND, personality) things all the time, from personal or professional or perspectives or both.

Why are you being discouraging?

LadyMarmaladeAtkins · 29/11/2022 20:54

Some of these books do very well. (Many I imagine don't.)

LadyMarmaladeAtkins · 29/11/2022 21:02

Oh, I see! I really need to learn to read threads in a linear fashion.

Whether the title works depends on the blurb on the book about what it is, and the actual content obviously. So, if you wrote a book about what you do know about BPD and your own experience, then going on to what you/people in general don't know, and interview clinical professionals, other people with BPD, and scientists at the cutting edge to find out (the "what I wish I knew" part), that could potentially be very interesting. People also make documentaries about this sort of thing, some of them end up on the BBC!

But many books that are a labour of love aren't actually that well researched or if they are, they aren't written very interestingly, and even if it's great, it's hard to say if it would be picked up by a publisher or if a self-published version would sell many copies. In any case, these days authors usually have to do a lot of their own publicity whether self-published or not, and that involves engaging with social media, YouTube, podcasters and so on. You don't seem to be keen on that, so it's going to be difficult.

But, try it. Just don't pay a lot of money to a vanity publisher, as they used to be called, to get it published. E-books and audiobooks are the way to go first, if you don't have a traditional publisher.

jetadore · 29/11/2022 21:14

“Borderline Personality Disorder - a female perspective” would be my suggestion. The what I wish... is a bit clunky and the key thing is that it’s coming from a woman.

Muddays · 30/11/2022 04:01

@peycho I'd call it 'Fishing for a personality' how non-specific disorders gave me hope.

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