Here’s a bit of a conundrum.

A short while ago I became virtual and then real friends with a writer who shares my passion for Cambodia.  She contacted me after reading my first Cambodian novel, A Clash of Innocents, which she (thankfully) loved. But she told me that she had found it in a bookshop in Siem Reap by happenstance, even though before her trip she did a Google search of Cambodia + novels and came up with nothing. She did not find it listed in Google. Whether she did a similar search in Amazon I don’t know, but even so, I was upset to find that me and my book was nowhere to be found in her first search. After all the work and writing I’ve done about Cambodia over the last few years……she found nothing. Needless to say, I was and still am incredibly frustrated.

And so now I am finishing up Cambodian novel two, and I’m faced with a dilemma. I already have chosen a title which I think fits the book well and is enticing to a prospective reader. But the word “Cambodia” or “Cambodian” is not in it. I’m sure it’s true that if that word or some form of it was in the actual title, a search for some sort of fiction having to do with the country would turn up my work.  So what do I do? Do I change the title to include the word “Cambodian”? Yes, I can think of a title which would work, although to my ear it is somewhat clunkier than the title I’ve already chosen. Maybe there is some way to fool around with the Google logarithms to bring me to the top of such a search, but I couldn’t begin to know how to do such a thing. To be honest, I thought I  had already done that sort of finagling when A Clash of Innocents was first published. I guess it didn’t work, though.

So what do you think? Should I change the title? Is there something else I should be doing instead or in addition? Any advice? After all, many of us love to read fiction related to our travels, and if someone is traveling to see Angkor Wat, they should be able to do a google search and find me. Right?