History That Never Was

If someone is picking up your book, whether physically or at an online retailer, they’re likely going to make their choice to buy your book based on the back of the book blurb. And if you’re a self-published author, you’ll be the one writing that back of the book blurb.

While I don’t think writing back of the book blurbs is half as challenging as writing a synopsis to send to a potential agent, it does still require some wordsmithing skills. I’ve written a previous post about this topic.

One of the things I notice when I’m scheduling social media posts for DefCon One is that some of the back of the book blurbs attract more attention than others. There seem to be a few things that grab more views:

1. A hook at the beginning. Much like how writing advice tells you to begin with a strong hook to your story, this is also key for your back of the book blurb. If you can give a reader a brief sentence that makes them want to keep reading the back of the book blurb, it increases the odds of them continuing to read that blurb and maybe your book. I think it’s important to keep this hook short and snappy.
2. Give them detail, but not too much. You don’t want to give away your entire plot in your back of the book blurb, but you also want to keep it readable. Using three or fewer sentences for the body of the blurb seems about right, and none of those sentences should be too complex. At the same time, the blurb should be accurate–you don’t want to promise one thing on the back of the book and give something different inside the book. Keep the potential reader engaged with your content so they don’t skip it and move on to the next thing.
3. Sum it all up. Not dissimilar from the hook sentence at the beginning, having a summary sentence at the end that makes the reader feel like they’ve got to read your book is ideal. This might be an unanswered question (if the answer is in the book) or a mention of other media with similarities to your book (like comps for an agent query, though with a bit more latitude as to what you include).

For our social media posts, I try to massage some of the back of the book blurbs that are written differently from this into a similar pattern. Sometimes I use a short quote from the book for the hook. And the summary is sometimes more of a call to action for social media, related to buying the book. Most often, I need to tighten up the body of the blurb so a potential reader can read it quickly rather than getting bored and wandering away. So sometimes, the book has its official back of the book blurb and a more succinct social media version, which is also a tactic you can use when you’re marketing your book!

Though they use slightly different terms for these pieces, this article also breaks down the pieces of a back of the book blurb in a nice way.

 

Tags: advice, book blurbs, marketing, social media

This entry was posted by dawn.vogel on Monday, June 23rd, 2025 at 6:00 am and is filed under Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.