VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE --PART ONE

Being a wannabe publisher is like Freaky Friday sometimes--I'm definitely in somebody else's body and they're in mine.  What writer hasn't suffered the ignominy of the Dread Title Change? And for no better reason than to sell books! If only they hadn't done it on my first book, slyly titled THE FEMINIST BORDELLO! Great title for a mystery, right? Kind of like those intriguing old Peter Dickinson titles, like THE GLASS-SIDED ANTS' NEST   or  THE YELLOW ROOM CONSPIRACY.

Well, my publisher definitely wasn't into intriguing and certainly wasn't into old. Nor did they appreciate the subtle humor. But you get it, right? (See, there's no such thing as a...oh, never mind.) They thought the "feminist" part would turn people off and "bordello" was a word nobody would know. Seriously. Even though there was a pretty good chance that  person buying a book would be literate.

They wanted a title that said "mystery". Not sly, intellectual mystery, like Peter Dickinson might write. Kind of generic, everyday mystery like some American...though surely not me!...would create. And so began the lists and tears. They went with DEATH TURNS A TRICK. To this day, I hate that title.

Then one day I started a new series, set in New Orleans, which, due to a high-profile  Mardi Gras murder, I called BLOODY CARNIVAL. Okay, even I knew that was lousy. I really wanted FAREWELL TO THE FLESH, you know, like they say at Lent,  when people give up meat? And also if someone were killed... well, how descriptive can you get, right?  Wrong. So very wrong. Nobody got it. Nobody liked it. They went with NEW ORLEANS MOURNING, considered by many to be my cleverest title. It still makes me cringe.

So can you guess where this is going?  You're probably already chortling, especially if you've ever been my editor, because you know I'm getting payback. The lists and tears have started again.

 Why is is that we can sit here in our office and see clearly that the author's title won't work, and be unanimous on the subject? And the author's friends and family are similarly unanimous? Will someone explain this phenomenon to me? It's exactly like when your writers' group and all your writer friends love your book, but everyone in New York thinks it sucks.
Is there a name for this thing?