Following on from my first blog, I thought I’d give you an insight into how I write my book blurbs.
- It is NEVER a simple case of write and forget. To have written 90,000 plus words for the book, and now having to capture the essence of that in less than 300, is a HUGE task.
- Remember what the purpose of the blurb is. It’s NOT a condensed version of the book. It is simply a very quick overview that asks the reader to investigate further, and then buy the book.
Summarize
I start by summarizing the story. This may take a while — sometimes a few weeks —and I usually end up with well over 1000 words.
Then I ask myself:
- what have I missed
- have I captured the true essence of the story
- does it ‘hook’ the reader
I work on finding those perfect snippets that say “read me”. I usually now have at least three versions to work with.
Workshop
At this stage I hold a workshop, usually with my wife and son; both are great critics and help immensely. Here the old whiteboard rules; we dissect the various themes I have completed and rearrange until we have something we all agree on.
By the time this process is complete, I have something I am happy to show to my advance team. Some of them will have read the manuscript at this stage and given feedback. Establishing an advance team is something I would strongly advise any indie author to do.
Review
Once I have the replies back, I review the feedback and then go through the editing process again, until I am happy with the result. Although the thought of writing the blurb usually has me finding other more important things to do, this process seems to make everything go much smoother.