Morgan Clasper Author

Everyone loves a good book series or box set (whether that’s an anthology, collection, or omnibus). For readers, they can binge-read and lose themselves in thousands of pages for a very modest price. And for authors, publishing series and box sets are a great way to boost your royalties, sell more books, and benefit from high readthrough.

However, when it comes to writing a blurb/book description for a series or box set, it can be tricky to know what to do. Should you simply use the description for book 1? Should you include a list of your books and nothing else?

And considering it’s so difficult to write a blurb for a single book, how can you condense an entire series into just a couple of hundred words?

In this article, I’ll be sharing 3 ways to write a book description for a book series or box set, along with real examples so that you can see these techniques in action.

Show the reader how much value they’re getting

This is especially useful in epic fantasy and other genres with very long books, but it can work in any series where you have multiple books that tally up to a high page count.

In essence, this tactic relies on showing the reader how much they’re getting for their money. While a single novel might be 300 or 400 pages, a series can quickly add up to over a thousand or more.

Here’s how Chris Fox advertises his 6-book Void Wraith saga:

After 26,000 years the Void Wraith have returned. The Eradication has begun. Over 1,800 pages of fiction.

Notice how at the end of this hook, we’re promised nearly two thousand pages of fiction. That’s a huge amount of value for a single purchase, and it’s a very easy detail to sprinkle into your blurb.

It’s especially attractive to readers who want to binge-read (I saw several reviews talking about how they read it during a long plane flight) or who want to make sure they’re getting their money’s worth.

Use bullet points to tease each book

This is my go-to technique for standalone romance series, where the books share an interconnected universe—like a Scottish Highlands clan, Mafia family, or sports team—but each book focuses on a specific couple.

Some romance series simply list each book with the male lead’s name:

• Book 1: Dominic
• Book 2: Anatoly
• Book 3: Jameson

Others focus on the particular tropes that each book includes, so that readers can anticipate each story and what they’ll find:

• Book 1: Billionaire romance, fake dating
• Book 2: Second chances, medical romance
• Book 3: Reverse age-gap, Military romance

These serve as quick and effective ways to give readers an insight into what your series or box set contains. That being said, there’s more we can do with this technique.

We can use each bullet to give a 1-3 sentence “teaser” that serves to hook readers and get them invested. Here’s a real example from Sweet Beach Reads by Elana Johnson:

• Aloha Hideaway Inn: Can Stacey and the Aloha Hideaway Inn survive strange summer weather, the arrival of the new resort, and falling for her enemy?
• Getaway Bay: He never dates the same woman twice. She’s his driver. When Esther gives Marshall a thoughtful birthday gift, roles shift violently in this sweet billionaire romance novel by USA Today Bestselling Author Elana Johnson.
• Women’s Beach Club: He’s a billionaire in hiding. She’s a yoga instructor with an ex-boyfriend problem. When they attend a gala together and Tawny’s ex is there, the next thing she knows, she’s engaged to the handsome Tyler – who the children’s wing is named after.

This description makes a great case study because, outside of these bullets, it focuses on the value that readers will get (four complete novels), the story location (Hawaii), and the mood of the series: charming, sweet, and heartwarming. These all give readers vital clues, all without reiterating any plot details.

As a quick note: Amazon KDP actually recommends including a list of included books in the product description of a boxed set, primarily so that customers can easily identify what’s included.

Hint at the bigger story

In cases where you don’t want to tease each book in a bullet, the other technique for writing a series or box set description is to keep your focus primarily on the first book, but then also hint at the wider story beyond.

In this style of description, you begin like you’re writing a description for book 1: introduce your protagonist, establish their desire, and show the big obstacle or antagonist that stands in their way.

(Quick tip: for more details on this method, along with my step-by-step framework for writing book blurbs, read my free copywriting book for authors).

Book one provides the immediate hook, grounding the reader by making the initial conflict and situation feel specific and immediate. But we don’t stop there. We can then “widen the lens” of the story by hinting at a greater threat, a deeper mystery, or an expanded scope.

This movement from the protagonist’s immediate problem to the wider world or consequences shows readers that they’re in for much more than first appears.

To give an example, take the description for The Folk of the Air by Holly Black. The beginning sets the scene and hooks readers: our protagonist Jude’s parents are killed, she’s taken by the Fae, and she’s feuding with the young and wicked Prince Cardan. But then, the scope widens:

To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.

In doing so, she becomes embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, discovering her own capacity for bloodshed. But as civil war threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.

The benefit of this technique is that it avoids giving a comprehensive, synopsis-like overview that bogs readers down in unnecessary detail and spoils the plot (I.e., in book 1, Jude discovers X, in book 2, she does Y, in book 3, she goes to Z…)

It also avoids the opposite problem, where the broader plot is treated in such broad strokes that it sounds vague and generic (“An epic adventure of friendship, courage, destiny, and the fate of the world.”)

In the example above, there are specific details: civil war, palace intrigue, a deadly alliance. This hints at how the story will grow and develop beyond book 1, without giving a play-by-play of the plot or resorting to vague “epic adventure” language.

Conclusion:

There’s no one-size-fits-all solution for writing a box set or series description. There are, however, certain techniques that you can use to hook readers and communicate the premise of your story.

Whether you want to write a bullet list to tease each individual book, or open with book one and then hint at the wider story that’s waiting just beyond, hopefully these examples will help you when writing your next series or box set description.

Happy blurb writing!

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