I had to learn to write the book blurbs for my nonfiction ghost books for Schiffer Publishing as a requirement of being published with them. When I self-published my urban fantasy/horror novel, How the Vortex Changed My Life, I was the most qualified to write the blurb for the back of my book. Since then, I have written many blurbs for books published by publishers, including my latest, a YA dark fantasy novel, Demon Memories.
Once we go through the basics of writing a blurb, I will share some sample blurbs.
Of course, “book blurb” is just one of many names for this feature. Sometimes called your back cover copy or your book description, this blurb is a handful of paragraphs summarizing your story and hopefully convincing readers to take a chance and buy your novel.
No matter what you call it, it is a summary of your story. It’ll play a critical role in attracting and convincing readers to buy your book.
Most often, you will end up writing a long summary disclosing many details, with little or no tension, and using multiple third-person descriptors.
For instance, you may have written that your book is a “ride through a fantasy wonderland” or that “it’ll keep your pulse racing.” These sound like exciting lead-ins of your story, but these descriptors don’t allow your readers to feel a part of that action.
In other words, you are committing the cardinal sin of telling rather than showing.
The other problem is that more detail generally leads to more text and, thus, more effort on the reader’s part.
When scanning your blurb for keywords the readers are looking for is difficult, they’re more likely to not read it. And according to statistics, if you lose them at the blurb, you lost a sale.
A book blurb is the literary equivalent of an elevator pitch. Imagine you’re in an elevator with someone and have less than 30 seconds to explain your book (without spoiling it). It is a short promotional piece intended to make your book an attractive buy.
When you write with this mindset, you tend to display the best characteristics of your book up front and in an exciting way. And it would help if you had fewer words to do it.
You’re more likely to be understood, and you provide an immersive, emotional experience for your reader. In other words, more showing, less telling.
You also allow your readers to draw their own conclusions about how they’ll feel when they read the book (i.e., excited, inspired, thrilled, tense, etc.). It’s a subtle way to compliment your readers and gain their respect.
These factors foster better engagement with your readers and increase the likelihood of selling them your book.
Today, where the world has shifted to doing business online, more people are buying books through click-and-deliver retailers like Amazon and Goodreads than ever before.
But there’s nothing romantic or nostalgic about buying books online because it’s not a fully immersive experience. Readers want to get in, find what they want, and get out. That means an author has shorter attention spans to work with and higher standards to meet.
ON AVERAGE, YOU ONLY HAVE 7 SECONDS TO IMPRESS A POTENTIAL NEW READER BEFORE THEY MOVE ON AND FORGET YOU.
To write the best blurb and make these 7 seconds work for us, we have to understand the people who are reading our blurb.
Because they’re just browsing at first, new potential readers tend to be lazy, needy, emotional, judgmental, impulsive, superficial, and easily distracted. They’re letting their eyes guide them, then making decisions with their emotions. You have to be able to get their attention when they barely have an attention span and force them to do a double-take on your book.
In this sense, your blurb’s purpose is to make it as easy as breathing for a reader to buy your book.
Your blurb should invite a person in and reassure them that none of their time is wasted.
All we have to do is formulate our blurb to answer two questions:
- “Are you talking to me?” (Is this the genre your reader enjoys reading?)
- “Is this worth my time?” (What is the main story arc/message, and is it one they are interested in?)
If you can satisfy their concerns, the amount of money they’re willing to spend becomes almost limitless.
Now that you have all the building blocks let’s polish them. There are two components to work on:
Visual Appeal
Since we know our readers are easily distracted, appearances matter. This is the first barrier to engaging your readers.
People will only bother to read the blurb once they feel relaxed and intrigued by how it looks.
Make sure your blurb has these visual cues to catch readers’ attention:
- A bolded headline (tagline)
- Clean look, lots of breathing room
- Consistent structure
- Short overall length
- Biggest paragraphs first
- Social proof.
Content and Structure
The second barrier is the flow of your blurb and how it makes readers feel. If the blurb reads as easy as it looks, you’ll get great engagement from readers.
Make sure your blurb has these key elements:
- A juicy headline**
- Logical flow
- Plenty of genre indicators
- Clear, simple language
- Emotion and power words
- Set realistic expectations
THE BEST BLURBS ARE BETWEEN 100 and 200 WORDS.
Remember, the first few lines of your book are your chance to connect with your readers. If you don’t engage them quickly, you might just lose their interest, and they’ll move on to another author’s page and buy their book instead.
If you’re stuck on how to start, imagine you’re just about to head out the door and your good friend asks you, “Hey, what’s your new book about?”
IF YOU HAD JUST 1 MINUTE TO TELL THIS GOOD FRIEND ABOUT YOUR BOOK, HOW WOULD YOU WORD IT?
Which parts would you want them to know the most? What parts might they find the most interesting? What would YOU want to know in that 1 minute if you were trying to decide whether or not a book was for you?
Make readers feel something and do it as quickly as possible. If you can get your readers attached to your story from when they lock eyes on it, you’ll quickly sell more copies of your book.
Don’t waste your precious time (and pull your last nerve) on describing your book. Instead, write a quick blurb. It’s a more enjoyable process, and it’s a surefire way to attract more readers!
It is all about selling your book, so capturing readers’ interests with that blurb is crucial. An engaging blurb will sell more copies of your book, get you more readers, and give you a strong foothold, whether a traditional or self-published author.
And isn’t that what we authors all want?
Here are samples of blurbs of two of my books and from two anthologies I have a story or poem in.
Back of the book blurb for Demon Memories:
No one expected the apocalypse in the almost idyllic small town of Moon Ridge, nestled in the mountains of Virginia.
Harper Doyle feels different. She has more than her fair share of problems than any normal teenager; an absent father her mother doesn’t talk about, and her friends died in a fire a year ago. There’s no boyfriend in sight, not even the cute former childhood friend, Jake Hewitt, who’s too busy hanging with the bratty son of the richest man in Moon Ridge.
It gets worse when Harper discovers she’s possessed by a demon.
Cresil is a demon with a problem. She wants to be shed of Harper but finds she can’t. An exorcism by Jake’s psychic mother doesn’t help.
Even worse, Cresil learns that she was never the demon summoned, but was sent by magic to take that demon’s place.
Baal has plans that include leading Lucifer’s demonic army into the mortal realm to jump start the apocalypse and battle Heaven. He just needs a possessed mortal to keep the portal between Earth and Hell open.
Except there’s a prophesy-that includes Cresil, Harper, and Jake-to stop the end of the world.
Blurb for Maverick Heart:
Lieutenant Michelle Roddenberry is a maverick and flaunts the rules. But as an officer in the Terra Federation Navy and with a galactic war going on against an alien race, one must follow orders. It is the difference between life and death. Grounded from joining her squadron on another mission and about to be dishonorably discharged too, she flaunts the rules again and steals her fighter spacecraft, flying off to join her squadron for one last battle.
Instead of finding her squadron, Michelle crashes on an unknown planet. It is a world full of changing wonder and danger. She finds another castaway there, an alien called Dakna. Both find themselves in a war with the planet, as Michelle tries to find a way off planet for them. The rule book thrown out; Michelle may find her maverick ways the only way to survive.
Blurb for the horror anthology, Vinyl Cuts:
Drop the needle and tune yourself to these classic Vinyl Cuts.
Would you sell your soul for a lifetime of fame in Rock n’ Roll? Meet the possessed, the frightening fae and the shattered souls of the sacrificed. Encounter the women ready to rage after misogynistic abuse! And let’s not forget the tortured terrors found slithering on the dark side of B.
Section 1: Your Time is Gonna Come
Welcome to the first installment of Vinyl Cuts. A chilling set. Ten tales of vengeance and horror! Let these grooves school you. Do someone dirty, and you’ll get the dirt back.
Section 2: You Wanted Everything
Tonight’s set of four tales will rearrange your mind! The consequences of riffing on the dark side are closer than they appear.
Section 3: Hell is for Children
The third installment of Vinyl Cuts is where records bleed. If you think your family is hell, check out these eight stories. Black cats and spiders will be welcome friends when we’re done.
Section 4: Sick Things
The penultimate collection is spattered here for the brave devotee of Vinyl Cuts.
Coming at you with nine twisted tales that make dancing with a duke a scream in the ballroom! Will you survive?
Section 5: B Sides
We couldn’t release you without exposure to our B-side tracks. Three final stories are amped up to terrify you to the end. Got time to kill?
Blurb for horror poetry anthology, Terror at Miskatonic Falls:
This January, winter has fallen hard on the small Massachusetts town of Miskatonic Falls. The icy wind has brought more than ice and snow, however. It has brought something ancient, alien, and evil. As the temperatures drop and the snow drifts build, a creeping horror crawls over the town and its inhabitants, pulsing an insistent mantra into their slowly unraveling minds: The Long Man Cometh.
When the end comes, it does so swiftly, silently, and goes unnoticed.
Until a lone state trooper is sent to investigate a strange phone call from somewhere in the small town. When he reaches Miskatonic Falls, however, he finds no people. No answers.
No hope.
Nothing, except dozens of scrawled, carved, and painted verse, scattered everywhere: In homes, churches, carved on trees and telephones poles, in diaries, and on the hoods of abandoned cars. Leading not only to an old manor on a hill overlooking the town – but also, perhaps, madness.
Over 30 contributors unveil an intimate look at the last surviving moments of a town gone mad, revealed through a bloody trail of scraps of verse. Read at your risk, dear traveller…
Pamela K. Kinney gave up long ago ignoring the demanding voices in her head and has been writing ever since. Her horror short story, “Bottled Spirits,” was runner-up for the 2013 WSFA Small Press Award and considered one of the seven best genre short fiction for that year. She has various short stories and poems published in fiction and nonfiction anthologies, magazines, and online zines, a science fiction novella, an urban fantasy novel, five nonfiction ghost books, and a nonfiction cryptid book. Her horror poem, “Dementia,” got her mentioned in Best Horror of the Year, Volume Thirteen. She has stories and poems in two horror anthologies to be released in 2024, plus a YA dark fantasy novel, Demon Memories, first book in the Moon Ridge trilogy.
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