Blurb Your Novel: How to Write Book Descriptions For Fiction

By Kat Sheridan

The Blurb: Your Second Most Powerful Marketing Tool!

You’ve written a great story and have the perfect cover for your novel, so why aren’t you getting the sales you deserve? Why are readers looking but not buying?
Maybe you’re shortchanging yourself with a less-than-stellar blurb. Whether you call it cover copy, jacket copy, flap copy, book description, promotional copy, or a blurb, those words are one of the most potent tools in an author’s marketing arsenal.

Blurb Your Novel: How to Write Book Descriptions For Fiction will teach you how to write powerful product descriptions that will convert browsers into buyers!
-Learn the basics of what goes into a compelling blurb
-Identify the best elements for your specific genre
-Learn how to use keywords that appeal to your target audience
-Learn how to make an emotional connection and make more sales!

With plenty of real-life examples, this easy-to-use guide will walk you through the steps you need to create a blurb that will convince readers to buy your book!
Once you’ve mastered the basics, learn how to:
-Shrink your blurb into taglines, loglines, elevator pitches and tweets

-Super-size your blurb for series, anthologies, or boxed sets

Bonus! Learn how to polish your Author Biography to look your best!

Whether you’re publishing a new novel or want to boost sales for an existing one, scroll up and click the Buy Now button to start learning how you can make the most of your blurb!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kat Sheridan
• Release date: Aug 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370956135

Kat Sheridan

KAT SHERIDAN is a former project manager and business analyst whose very serious exterior hides a secret romantic. She is fond of books, bourbon, big words, coffee, and shiny things. She is known to wear glitter-pink nail polish under her combat boots, when she bothers wearing shoes at all. To be honest, that isn’t very often. Kat splits her time between the Midwest in the summer and the South in the winter, sharing her home with the love of her life and an exceedingly dignified Shih Tzu. No matter where her body is, though, Kat’s imagination can most often be found on some storm-wracked coast, plotting historical romances that include forbidding castles, menacing villains, and heartthrob heroes. She imagines a world where men are men, and spirited women can conquer even the toughest of them with a sultry glance, a passionate kiss, and a few well-chosen words. She loves to hear from readers, and can be contacted at www.KatSheridan.com

Book preview

Blurb Your Novel: How to Write Book Descriptions for Fiction Copyright 2017 by Kat Sheridan©

Published by Kat Sheridan

Digital and interior layout: www.formatting4U.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at [e-mail].

This publication includes samples or examples of fictional and non-fictional works. Example blurbs are the creation of Kat Sheridan for the identified works. The works for which they are written are the creation and possession of their respective authors. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this publication are products of the authors’ imaginations and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author of this publication.

The contents of this publication are not intended to guarantee income or sales for any individual. All income earned as a result of the contents remains solely the property of the creator.

The use of material from, or references to, various websites does not imply endorsement of those sites in their entirety. Availability of websites or other Internet pages is subject to change without notice.

For more information on the author and her works, please see www.KatSheridan.com or www.BlurbWriter.com.

Dedication

Raising a glass of the best bubbly to Judi Fennell for her constant encouragement

Contents

The Blurb: Your Second-Best Marketing Tool

Blurb Basics: Elements of a Blurb

Size Matters

Super Shrink It: Taglines, Loglines, Elevator Pitches

The DO and DON’T List

Romance

Know Your Romance

Contemporary, Category Romance

Historical Romance

Romantic Suspense

Erotic Romance

Paranormal, Fantasy Romance

Inspirational Romance, Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements

Crime Fiction: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense

Mysteries and Suspense

Thrillers

Science Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Alternate History, and Horror

Young Adult

Other Fiction

Literary Fiction

Women’s Fiction

Adventure Novels

Historical Fiction

Children’s Fiction

Series: Supersize Your Blurb

Boxed Sets and Anthologies

Bonus: Sell Yourself: The Author Bio

Author’s Note

Titles Used in This Book

The Blurb: Your Second-Best Marketing Tool

Imagine this scene: Beth Booklover is standing in a bookstore in front of a crowded shelf of books or perusing a screen full of offerings at an on-line book distributor. Your book cover catches her eye and she pulls it off the shelf or clicks on it to discover more about it.

You spent a lot of time and money on that book cover. It’s perfect for your genre, encapsulates all the best elements of your book, and as Beth Booklover just proved, it’s your number one marketing tool for getting your book into a reader’s hands.

So what does Ms. Booklover do next? If she’s in a bookstore, she’s going to flip the book over to read the back if it’s a paperback or open it up to read the jacket copy if it’s a hardcover. If she’s shopping on-line, she’s going to go straight to the book description.

And it’s those words that will decide whether or not Ms. Booklover goes from being a browser to a buyer.

Whether you call it cover copy, jacket copy, flap copy, book description, promotional copy, or a blurb, those words are the second best tool an author has in their marketing arsenal. Your blurb will become the foundation of your whole marketing campaign. Once the basic blurb is created, it can be sized up or down to meet multiple marketing needs, from a tagline on promotional bookmarks, to a tweet, to a 4,000 character book description on Amazon.

This book will show you how to identify the most suitable elements for your genre, how to choose the right words to describe those elements, and how to assemble those words into a blurb that will convince the reader to buy your book.

A bit of history:

For the purposes of this book, I’m going to use the word blurb as the term for those words, although traditionally, cover copy and blurbs were very different things. Back in the days when big, traditional publishing houses controlled the book industry, a line or two of effusive praise from a well-known author or a great review would be splashed across the front cover of a book. They referred to this line as a blurb. The summarized book description was called cover copy, flap copy, or jacket copy, and would be written by in-house copy writers.

The word blurb actually dates to 1907, and was created by American humorist Gelett Burgess. His definition of a blurb is a flamboyant advertisement; an inspired testimonial. Eventually, this term came to refer to any publisher contents on a book’s back cover.

As publishing evolved and more authors moved into small press or independent publishing/self-publishing, the burden of supplying book descriptions fell more and more to the authors rather than to dedicated copy writers. And those authors used the term blurb to describe the bite-sized summaries of their books. And many authors loathed writing them as much as they hated writing the dreaded synopsis (a longer form summary of all of a book’s key plot points or subject matter).

You can do it!

Just as independent authors today can hire professional artists to produce their book covers, they can also hire copy writers or specialized blurb writers to create compelling book descriptions for them. With this book, authors can tackle the job of blurb writing themselves. Even if you decide not to write your own blurb, knowing what goes into making a good one can help you be a better judge of copy you’re paying for to make sure you’re getting the best return on your marketing budget.

I often say that selling a novel comes down to three things: Content, Cover, and Cover Copy.

You already have the first two parts. The only thing left is to write compelling cover copy to let readers know what your book is about and to entice them to buy it.

Many authors who have no trouble writing a full length novel will freeze at the idea of having to summarize it in under two hundred words. That’s normal, but it doesn’t have to happen if you know a few tricks.

Many of the following chapters have a Super Start Summary for those of you who are the Sergeant Joe Friday types: you want just the facts, ma’am. The chapter contents will then flesh out those concepts for folks who like more details. Whichever type you are, this book will give you the confidence to try writing your own blurbs and be better able to judge a book by its cover!

So choose your genre and let’s get started!

Blurb Basics: Elements of a Blurb

Super Start Summary:

• Create a description of no more than two main characters in the format of adjective-noun-character name

• Define the Goal, Motivation, Conflict (GMC) of your main character(s)

• Mention or imply your setting and/or time period

• Identify your genre using key words your target audience identifies with or relates to

• Identify the inciting incident

• Use vivid words

• Match the tone and voice of the blurb to the tone and voice of the book

• Create a killer last line or call to action for your characters

Introduction

A good blurb is like an advertisement for a striptease joint: enough is revealed that the customer is enticed, but enough remains hidden that the customer has to pay the admission fee to see more.

For most fiction blurbs, there is a fairly straightforward formula to this "reveal