Subtitle: definition

Subtitle: The predictable and only intermitantly interesting story of how we’ve come to the point where every book must have a very long subtitle including the words, “why,” “how,” and “what you can do about it” and why suggesting to your publisher that maybe your book could do without a subtitle brings a gasp of disbelief followed by a pained disquisition about how bookstores wouldn’t know which shelf to bury it on, with a digression about why some marketing person somewhere decided that some novel needed to be subtitled “A Novel,” so that soon, what you can do about it is to subtitle every novel "A Novel,” just in case inattentive readers or, for that matter, bookstore shelvers, might mistake it for a manual on home birth or perhaps a duck and how (like) cute you can be in your subtitle and (like) still get away with it or (alter)na(t)ively why you can man(gle) words to (re)veal new meaning and when it’s appropriate to include the name/nickname of your pet or/or spouse in the subtitle and what difference it makes when you’ve read the most interesting parts of the book in the subtitle and, of course, what you can do about it (hint: not much)