The art of writing a blurb is considerably different than the art of writing a book. This key piece of your marketing infrastructure will tell people what to expect from your book, while having its own rules and expected formats to follow. Here’s a guide on how to write a blurb that actually sells, no matter what genre you are writing in.
Check your comp titles
The first thing you should be doing when writing your blurb is looking at your comp titles. A comp title is a book that is similar to yours and has already been successful. It’s what you might say to someone who wanted a shorthand for what to expect from your book, or when pitching to a publisher. A nonfiction writer might say that their book is Atomic Habits meets Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before, for example.
Go ahead and read the blurbs of the top books you would say are most like yours, as well as anything else that is ranking in the top sales categories for your book right now. Be aware that some books will have two blurbs: the one used on the back of the physical copies of the book and the one used on sales pages like Amazon or your own website might be different. If you are self-publishing, you probably don’t need to put this much effort in, although you can always A/B test and tweak your blurb as time goes on – but keeping the two versions the same at first is fine.
Note the format that they use, how the blurb starts and ends, whether they use any formatting like bold text or italics, and whether they include reviews and quotes from industry figures. Make note also of what kind of language and keywords they are using – if any of them are relevant to your book, you might want to think about including them too to help your SEO.
Keep it clean and clear
Once you have written up your blurb, make sure to check it as carefully as possible. The formatting should be clean – you should definitely check it once you have uploaded it to the sales page as well, just in case anything got lost in the process. You also need to make sure that there are absolutely no typos, punctuation errors, mistakes in character or place names, or any inconsistencies with the book itself. These are unforgiveable in a blurb, which is the first thing the reader will see when they are considering whether or not to pick up the book.
In a digital marketplace, book shopping can look very different to how it looks in person. In person, a reader might walk to their favourite section, pick up a book based on the cover, read the blurb, and then read a little of page one to see if it grabs their attention. In a digital marketplace, the reader is searching for a keyword, seeing the titles that come up, then being enticed further by the cover, then reading the blurb. They are less likely to read the first page, unless they are able to read a sample on Amazon for example, and more likely to read the customer reviews next. Your blurb becomes a much more important selling space for not only drawing readers in through the use of keywords, but convincing them that your book is the one for them. For this reason, a mistake here can be deadly.
If you don’t want to work hard on writing a blurb, or get yourself tied in knot asking AI to do it and then scrambling to get rid of the resulting hallucinations, then there is another solution. As a ghostwriter, I also offer a full-service self-publishing package for all of my clients. Not only can I write or edit your book for you, I can also get the cover designed, interior formatted, and the book listed for sale on Amazon with a blurb, A+ content, and your Amazon author profile – just get in touch today and we can discuss everything you need.
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