really: colon: a novel???

Does EVERY novel HONESTLY have to be Something: A Novel anymore? Like, actually as part of the title?? I understand if you want to put it somewhere on the cover (I suppose. I guess that's how it's done these days.) But do publishers have to list the actual official title that way? As though we don't understand?


A Thread of Sky:  A Novel
Pretention: A Novel (no, just kidding, I made that one up)


An Invisible Sign of My Own: A Novel
a title so fatuous I forgot it simply clicking back to this page from Amazon.
sadly, this next one is also by the same author (not a good track record, lady)....


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake: A Novel (although... I mean, let's be real...that one is in trouble to begin with...and, along with A Hatred For Tulips [mercifully spared the : A Novel pretentious treatment] [further HA! it's on sale for ONE CENT] share the title of WORST TITLE EVER (Preposterous!).  These might even be excellent books, for all I know, but while I may not judge a book by its cover, I do judge by its title (at least a little) and I can't even bring myself to read the synopses of these eye-rollers.


They even jacked with my beloved The Imperfectionists (more on  this later) which (I still refuse to believe) is actually a part of the title but sometimes shows up on amazon and also on my kindle copy which makes me a little grossed out considering aside from this, it might be a perfect book.


I feel about this phenomenon the way I feel about JUICY: COUTURE.


If I could get rid of a grammatical unit (that's not to say rule-- if we're talking about rules, I'd jettison the deal with ending a sentence with a preposition. I purposefully do that one all the time, just because 90% of the time, there's no good reason not to. (ha!) and when you rearrange your whole sentence to fix it, you sound like a douche. But if I could get rid of  a mark, a unit, I'd get rid of the colon. Semi colons I kind of dig, but colons are...

Yep.

I don't like to feel mean about things. But I've had about enough of this. Was it always like this? I see no Great Expectations: A Novel, Gone With The Wind: A Novel, Moby Dick: A Novel, not even my dear teach, Cronin, shows up as The Passage: A Novel. (Or The Summer Guest or Mary and O'Neill for that matter!) Sure it's on the cover, but it's not a part of the title. But perhaps there's something I'm missing. Some special purpose for calling EVERY NOVEL ON THE PLANET WHATEVER COLON A NOVEL that has somehow escaped me. Please, enlighten me? Anyone? Anyone in publishing?