But I think the title and presentation of 'The God Delusion' would dissuade a lot of religious people from picking it up at all, if they have any of my wanting-to-please-the-group-by-following-norms instincts...Some people who would curiously pick up a book called 'Comparing God and Science' or something similarly innocuous, might literally feel bad about reading a book whose very title implied that many of their friends and family were deluded.

I know religious people who I think were significantly provoked by the title into buying it. In neither case did one deconvert (as far as I can tell, again, for all I know they were closet atheists and the book made them genuinely religious by attacking their social group).

Apparently, the book gave them an experience of encountering ideas of an opposing ideology, and having not been swayed by it (perhaps due to the rhetoric), they (apparently) have more conviction than before.

One thing to take from this anecdote is that people differ from each other greatly in how they interpret and react to things. You're generalizing too much from your responses to writing styles and such.

Bear in mind that my anecdotes are of religious people reacting defensively and failing to be convinced by the book, exactly as you predict. Nonetheless, there is diversity among such people and it's not at all clear that a more restrained title would have had more success among religious people by any metric.

Whereas coherent atheist message control is impossible, the best option is probably to have media catering to all sorts of personalities. Those whose receptiveness to moderate books depends on the absence of strident books, or vice versa, may be untargetable.