Tag: book blurb

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How to Write that Dreaded Book Blurb

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.

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Writing That Dreaded Book Blurb

Blurbs… a silly word that makes so many authors turn into a dribbling mess; me included!

I spend months writing the manuscript.

Wait! I hear some cry, you should write the blurb first, then the book. Well, I tried this and it doesn’t work for me.

I edit, rewrite and do this all again, possibly a number of times until I’m happy with the result. Then I send the manuscript to a group of readers I call my advance team. They read, comment and make suggestions. These come back and, once again I need to go through all this to decide if I will use the suggestions made.

I now have a manuscript I’m happy to send to my editing team. For an indie author, the next step is the layout. I used to have my graphic artist do this but I now have a program, Atticus, that I use. This program is so good that within hours, I can have the book sorted, laid out and all the front and back matter added. This is when I need the blurb.

It should be easy, hell I wrote the book! But I now have to write less than 300 words to summarise a book of around 90,000. I know that less is always better if possible, and I need to give a potential reader an indication of the story and pique their desire to read. OMG!

Usually there are a number of versions before I get one I am happy with. Then I call on others to comment. My wife and son critique as well as the advance team. It may mean a number of calls to workshop the wording and imagery. This can take weeks to achieve the result I want, other times it happens very quickly. I also have a couple of readers check the blurb to see if it would convince them to buy the book. After all, this is the purpose of the blurb.