Why All the Long Book Titles?

... asks the Reading Copy blog, before giving us the answer :

The internet is at fault for the tsunami of obtusely long book titles that are washing onto our literary shores. The premise is that publishers wish to optimize their book titles for search engine results and so they are jamming as many key words into a title as they can, which means lots of colons and subtext.

The Guardian uses Clive Ponting’s Armageddon: The Reality Behind the Distortions, Myths, Lies and Illusion of World War II as an example of this practice but personally I think Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It by Dick Morris takes the cake. The title is so long I almost feel is if I don’t need to read the book anymore.