Angela Scott
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Are you having a difficult time writing a Book Blurb? You're not alone. 

4/14/2013

13 Comments

 
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Here you are. You've just completed your mega manuscript and now it's all come down to this: the writing of the book blurb.

This is perhaps the BIGGEST selling factor your book will ever have. It's the part that lets readers know what your mega manuscript is all about. It's the description, for goodness sake. How hard can it be to write it?

Oh, it's hard. It's real hard a'right (There's a Steve Carell joke to made here, but I won't stoop that low). Anyhoo...

A good cover is nice. Great editing is awesome. But if you can't even explain what your book is about in 200 words or less, you're pretty much screwed. Yep, 200 words. Sometimes even less than that (depending on the guidelines of certain online retailers). You have to take that 100K novel and condense it into a brief (and I mean brief) overview of what your story is about. And you have to make it compelling, hooking the reader and getting them interested without divulging everything. You have to give them a taste, entice them into reading more. Good freakin' luck, right?

Writing the book description is a crucial element of selling your book and yet it is the most difficult. Ask any author and they'll tell you about all their hair pulling, their banging of heads on desks, and binge eating (or drinking, whatever the case may be). It's a frustrating process for sure.

So I'm going to give you a couple of basic tips to get you started. Here we go:

1) This is a biggie. Go look at book blurbs on the backs of books. Simple, yet effective. Go to your local book store or library and pick books off the shelf, specifically in your genre. Look at examples and see which descriptions grab your attention. When I first started out, I did this exact thing. I was at a thrift store, thumbing through the used books when I happened upon the novel DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER. Click that link and take a look at that book blurb. Seriously, it's good. I bought the book, took it home, and it sits on my shelf as a reminder of what a book blurb should be.

2) Think of a movie promo. Movie promos are like less than a minute long. They have to grab the viewer's attention and make them want to stand in line to see the new release. Did they tell you everything about the movie? Nope. Did they set the scene? Yep. Did they tell you who the main character or characters were? Yep. Did they tell you the outcome? Nope. You'll have to watch the movie to find that out. Keep that in mind when writing your book blurb.

3) Remember the main arc or plot of your story. Remember the main character. Stick to that in your description. Forget subplots or minor chracters. You don't have time or enough words to include all that.

4) Run it past your beta readers, your friends, your online author buddies, run it by someone, anyone! Ask them this question: Does reading this make you want to run out and buy this book? Why or why not?

5) And last, but not least, edit it! Oh my gosh! I can't tell you how many times I've picked up a book or looked online at book descriptions to see misspellings and grammar errors. That's the worst. Yikes! Make sure that thing is as polished as ever or you'll be turning readers away left and right.

Good luck writing that book blurb. Believe me, I completely understand what you're going through. I'm in the process of writing my 5th book blurb for my upcoming novel and the process doesn't get any easier. Maybe it's not supposed to :)

Leave a comment and let me know about your book blurb writing process. Pass on some tips and tricks of your own. Let's help each other out, because boy, we can use all the help we can get. 

13 Comments
Sarah P. link
4/14/2013 02:17:50 pm

Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for writing this post! I'm currently faced with the task of writing the blurb for my debut YA novel. It's sort of like author torture. It needs to be gripping, accurate and brief. Help!!! I'm in the looking at other blurbs stage right now. I wrote a couple but I'm not there yet. However, as difficult as it is, I'm overjoyed to be faced with this 'problem'. :)

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Patricia Lynne link
4/22/2013 08:56:08 am

Blurb writing is evil... necessary but still evil. Even when I get lucky and have a stroke of genius, the blurb is still hard to write. Maybe it's because of the pressure to be enticing and to grab the reader.

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Jas. C
6/4/2013 01:53:48 am

I found it's a lot different when you are doing a book with many different stories. Horowitz Horror is a good example. A really good one. My blurb is based on that. Also, you can use ideas with out plaguerising it. As long as you edit the idea so it is your own...

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Melanie Sands link
8/20/2013 10:44:57 pm

It really IS hard to write a book blurb for a collection of short stories - "This is a collection of various short stories" is about all I've come up with up till now. Or else something that's about as fascinating as my shopping list. Aaaaaarggh!

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Jennifer Innes link
6/4/2013 08:15:16 am

This is such good advice I had to share it on twitter. :)

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Marion Ueckermann link
6/21/2013 10:45:24 pm

No wonder I headed for the popcorn first :)

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ML Journeys
7/22/2013 10:56:24 am

Why would you be writing your own book blurbs and not have a well-known-ish writer do it for you? Doesn't it look amateur-ish to do it yourself? Call me naive

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Angela Scott
7/22/2013 11:13:41 am

The blurb is the book description you find on the back cover that tells you what the story is about. Some authors can hire someone to do it for them, but most often (even with some traditional and small presses--such as mine) the author is in charge of writing that description. It's actually a good thing, because if an author can't describe their own story in 200 words, that's bad. Remember elevator pitch. Can you tell me about your novel in one sentence? Now that's an even harder challenge, but you should be able to do it.

Also, if you're going to query literary agents or publishers, you'll need a blurb. That will most likely fall on you, the author, to do unless you're wealthy enough (and trust another person well enough) to read your book and come up with a perfect description.

Most self-published authors have no other choice than to write their own. And as with everything, some will be good and some will not. Every author needs to do a lot of research and figure out what works best for them. The post is simply to give them a beginning, a place to start.

Hope that helps :)

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Fiona R
7/23/2013 01:31:00 pm

I'm in the process of publishing my first novel through Createspace. When I was still self editing, I noticed this author service: "Pay $199 and get a seasonal writer to write your book blurb, a short and a long descriptions..." I snorted. You call yourself a writer and you can't even tell people what your book is about?

Now I'm in the proofing stage and my blurb is going nowhere. Can't tell you how many times I almost hit that BUY button to get someone else to do it. I had to keep telling myself: this is good practice; this is hell but this is good for you ...

Luckily for indie authors, if we don't get it right for the moment, we can always update the back cover at a later time.

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Kineosho link
9/29/2013 08:10:47 pm

I have to say I'm finding it really hard to get this last 1% done - the blurb is proving to be quite a nightmare!

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NissimLevy
10/17/2013 04:44:02 am

The burb for Dearly Devoted Dexter needs an editor, it's got grammatical errors.

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Jon Ronnquist
11/12/2013 06:43:26 am

Short, sweet, to the point. Thank you for this. Point 5, edit it, is very apt. Even the blurb you link to - it's a good one - has a stray "do" in the second paragraph that forces you to stop and read the sentence again. :-)

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Pedro Barrento
11/18/2013 08:33:20 pm

I wrote an article on book blurbs with a very alternative view on the subject. You may find it interesting and, in a sense, complementing your own article:

http://ideasforarevolutioneng.wordpress.com/2013/11/12/how-to-promote-your-self-published-book-unorthodox-advice-part-three/

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