Tag: Book Description
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3 Ways to Write a Blurb for a Book Series or Box Set
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…
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Why Studying Bestselling Books Isn’t The Best Advice For Indie Authors
When writing your book description or gathering ideas for your book cover, it’s helpful to browse Amazon and look at what bestselling books in your genre are doing. This is particularly helpful for authors who are stuck on their book description. Taking inspiration from others is a great way to stimulate your creativity and give…
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Book Cover vs Book Description: Which Is More Important?
When you start marketing your book, you might be faced with a big question: Is your book cover more important for getting readers, or is a compelling book description really behind a book’s success? It’s easy to see when a book cover goes wrong. Because a poor-quality cover is one of the quickest ways to…
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How to Market a Low-Stakes Story
Blurbs need to be exciting. This is a conventional piece of book marketing wisdom, and it’s not wrong. A blurb (or book description) needs to hook readers and get them curious enough about your story to make a purchase. Many blurbs do this through compelling stakes. Characters are faced with impossible situations, painful choices, or…
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Writing a Nonfiction Book Description: The Danger of Appealing to Everyone
Every so often, a client comes to me with a particular problem. They have a nonfiction book filled with so much content and so many selling points that including everything in the book description becomes an impossible task. One recent book I worked on was part travel guide, part self-help, and part memoir. While this…
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How Long Should Your Book Description Be?
The short answer: about 200-250 words. But in reality, it depends on your exact book and genre. After working on thousands of blurbs, I’ve never enforced an arbitrary word count. Some books naturally require more words to communicate their premise and selling points. However, that doesn’t mean you can simply ignore the word count and…
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Why You Shouldn’t Use AI For Your Book Description
When it comes to publishing their book, many authors hit a wall—the dreaded book description. They feel like the story is the important part, the cover is exciting, and the blurb is a nuisance that feels impossible to write. Authors may be tempted to outsource the job to an LLM like ChatGPT. The problem with…
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5 Book Description Mistakes You Might Not Know You’re Making
We’ve all heard that when writing your book description, you should open with a hook, establish your protagonist, and end with a big cliffhanger. This is something I’ve done and taught for years. But there’s one other part of your blurb that most authors miss. And leaving it out might be costing you opportunities for…
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Words as Symbols: a Review of Blurbs That Sell Books by Chris Fox
Blurbs That Sell Books is the tenth book in Chris Fox’s popular Write Faster, Write Smarter fiction-writing series. And, being someone who has spent an unhealthy amount of time around blurbs, I naturally grabbed a copy of Blurbs That Sell Books as soon as I heard about it.
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5 Types of Book Description Hook (and How to Use Them)
Your hook is the single most important part of your book description. You have about two seconds to grab your prospective readers’ attention, otherwise you risk them clicking away and finding something else to read. No pressure, right? The good news is you don’t need to invent a completely original hook from scratch. After writing…