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.