Once you’ve caught the attention of a shopper with your book’s cover, the next thing they’re likely to do is to read the blurb to find out what your book is all about to see if it’s up their street. You’ve spent a long time crafting your book, so the blurb needs to be as compelling as possible. The short description, typically between 100 and 200 words, will give consumers insight into what to expect, so crafting this text is a vital step in the book writing, book publishing and book printing process that should not be overlooked, and its power should not be underestimated. In this article, we explore how to craft the perfect blurb to sell your book.
Understand Your Target Audience
To craft an engaging book blurb, you need to understand your target audience. Who are your ideal readers? What are their interests and preferences? What would capture their attention? Knowing and understanding what would hook your target audience is vital, as it ensures the words will resonate with them, making it more likely they will purchase your book and read it cover to cover.
Begin With a Hook
The average person has an attention span of just 8 seconds. In those 8 seconds, you need to grab the reader’s attention with a hook. The brief but intriguing statement needs to spark their interest and curiosity if they are to continue reading. The hook could be a question, a bold statement or a fact that grabs their attention and should give readers some insight into what’s to come.
Introduce Your Main Characters
After you’ve got readers’ attention with a compelling hook, it’s time to introduce your main characters. Provide a glimpse into their personalities and the roles they’ll play in the story as a whole. Focus on what makes the characters unique—briefly explore their motivations, challenges and conflicts that they face. However, be careful not to reveal too much information. Blurbs should be a spoiler-free zone!
Set the Tone and Atmosphere of the Story
To pique readers’ interest, the blurb should provide a sense of the atmosphere and tone of the story. Are your characters living in a dystopian future? Or perhaps a seemingly-perfect magical kingdom beset by an unknown evil? Setting the stage will give readers an insight into the atmosphere of your tale, which will help them decide whether the book is interesting to them or not.
Introduce Conflict
Your book blurb should also introduce the central point of conflict, as it is the driving force of your story. Without giving away any major spoilers for the plot, explain the challenges that your main characters will face in the story, as this will pique the interest of readers who will be keen to find out more.
Finish With a Cliffhanger
Book blurbs appeal to our sense of curiosity. By ending your blurb with a cliffhanger, you make readers curious about what happens next. If the cliffhanger is compelling enough, the people reading the blurb will quickly head to the nearest checkout to purchase your book or click ‘add to basket’, desperately wanting to know what happens in the end.
Keep It Short
Blurbs are typically between 100-200 words long. But including a good hook, setting the tone and atmosphere, introducing the main characters and the conflicts they’ll face, and finishing with an intriguing cliffhanger in 100-200 words is a big challenge. Try to avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details and backstories. Instead, focus on providing readers with a clear and concise summary of what makes your book worth reading.
Edit and Make Changes
The first blurb you write probably won’t be the one you publish. The concise nature of blurbs makes them incredibly challenging to write, so you’ll probably end up with several versions. Take the time to edit and revise the blurb to ensure it’s free of grammatical errors, typos and sentences that lack clarity.
Ask For Feedback
Once you’re happy with the blurb you’ve written, seek feedback from friends and family members. They might be able to point out where you’ve divulged too much about the story (or perhaps not enough), or maybe they’ll suggest a way to enhance your blurb’s all-important hook. Their valuable insights will help you craft a compelling blurb that makes people want to read your book cover to cover.
In Summary
A captivating book blurb is vital if your book is to have an impact in the competitive market that is publishing. By understanding your target audience, starting with a hook, introducing your main characters, setting the stage, introducing the main conflict, ending with a cliffhanger, making edits and asking for feedback, you can craft an exciting blurb that piques peoples’ interest. Don’t underestimate the power of an intriguing book blurb!