The Title of the Story Is...

Coming up with a title is generally for me not all that hard. Not that I've written hundreds of stories through the years, but I always seem to have the title come pretty quickly to me. With my latest novel "Tracking A Shadow" I struggled a little with the title. Next to the cover, the book title is the first thing a potential buyer will see. And I had several ideas for titles come and go for this novel. When the framework was developing in my mind "The Stalker" was the basic title. But it really didn't fit quite or feel right. I then went through many others:

Mind over what matters

Body and No Soul

Track the Shadow

Shadows

Behind the Shadow

Beyond the Shadow

Underneath the Shadow

Separate Lives

The Game of Distraction

These are the ones I wrote down, but there were many others that rolled through my head. Finding the right theme or the tone was difficult, maybe because of the twists in the plot. I didn't want to give too much away but give an overall feel to what was happening on the pages. The Shadow was really Jarvis being somewhat clueless on what was really going on, while attempting to track down the evidence, bringing it out of the darkness.

I also wanted a title that stood out and wasn't used before. A simple Google search didn't find another story with the same title. I wanted it to be unique to stand out and be first when someone searched it. (No that's not the case as of yet, but close to the top). Hopefully I succeeded in creating an interesting mood of mystery with the title and the cover, which translates when the reader reads the story.

Do others out there struggle with their book titles as well? Is the title as important as the cover when drawing potential readers?