The Medium publication I run, Prism & Pen, has attracted a lot of really good writers with literary backgrounds and storytelling experience. And my biggest consistent struggle is getting them to understand that they can’t use the kind of titles that work for them in print.

They often craft objectively gorgeous titles that would work beautifully in a literary magazine or a bound anthology. But what a lot of us don’t understand, is that by the time we have a publication like that in our hot little hands, we’ve probably already personally committed to reading a good bit of whatever is inside.

The same just cannot be said for the online world. Titles have to compete for fleeting attention, and if we don’t do that right we’re not going to get readers.

I’m not saying I have it all figured out, but like you I agonize over titles sometimes as much as I do about writing a 1500 word story.

Because I know for sure that if the title sucks it doesn’t matter how good the story is.

Like you say, I have to balance that out with the long-term prospect of making sure I don’t scare people off with clickbait. Because while click bait might work a couple times, in the long run it will absolutely kill readership.

Here’s a quick little tip that has helped some people. As a Medium publication editor, I’ve often noticed that I can just flip a writer’s subtitle and title and make it work. For some reason, people tend to be a lot more descriptive and compelling in their subtitle than they are in their title, which is often too generic and artistic.