The Back of Book Blurb

One of the most difficult pieces of writing a new author ever faces is the Back of Book Text. That innocuous couple of paragraphs which look so easy will create publishing success or failure at a stroke.

The Back of Book Blurb is one of the most underestimated marketing tools available. This is the one piece of writing which gets disseminated everywhere. Bookshop websites, book distributer’s catalogues, press releases, Amazon pages, social media sites, the list is endless. This little piece of writing is going to be read more than other piece of writing you will ever do. And each time it’s read, somebody is going to make a decision about your book.

Before settling down at the keyboard to throw a couple of hundred words on the page, it’s worth considering what the purpose of a Back of Book Blurb actually is. And just as importantly, what it isn’t.

The Back of Book Blurb is the point at which the casual book browser is going to commit to either buying your book or to moving on to the next one. It’s the point where the Bookshop Owner is going to decide whether to stock your book or not and it is the choke point where your Author Page is going to convert the curious into fans.

A Back of Book Blurb is not a description of your book, it should to be a sales pitch which creates the imperative to click ‘Buy Now’. It needs to give a good positive feel on what the book is actually about without getting bogged down in excessive detail or turning into a cast list of your characters.

Will the reader understand the genre? The problem facing the protagonist? The style of the book? Has anybody said anything nice about the book?

In addition to that, a good Back of Book Blurb will contain very subtle keys to move your book upwards in the search results. It will create a positive feel towards the book even if the subject matter is dark. It will form links in the reader’s mind which trigger associations with other books.

Writing the Back of Book Blurb is a highly skilled task and arguably, the most important piece of creative writing an author will ever do.