If you're going to self-publish your book, you must know how to construct the blurb on the back of your book.
Fewer
selling tools are more important than a well-written story blurb. For readers,
the cover design creates intrigue, but if you catch a potential reader’s
attention, the blurb is what will sell your book and bring you new readers. A
“blurb” can refer to both a “description blurb” that you write for the back cover
of your book and a “review blurb.” For the purpose of this post, I’ll focus on
the “description blurb” and how you, the writer, can craft the best possible
one.
A Blurb’s Do’s
-Reference
the book’s genre and it’s central theme
-Create
intrigue around your character’s main conflict
-Dive
straight in and introduce your protagonist(s)
-Keep
it short and punchy
-Reference
your book-writing or professional status, if it relates to your book.
A Blurb’s Don’ts
-Summarize
the first chapter
-No
spoilers, no matter how tempted you are
-Compare
your book to other books, or yourself to other writers
-Open
with any overused phrase like, “In a world,”
-Give
anything away
-Say
how amazing your book is
Anatomy of a Blurb
While
there’s no perfect formula for writing the best blurb for your next novel,
there are some patterns worth taking note of: Calling out your success in the
book-writing world, introducing the reader to the protagonist in a way that creates
intrigue without delving into all the assorted details, and referencing the
central point of conflict without explaining how a resolution may come about.
Searching
online I looked for best sellers and came across these blurbs. Jayne Ann Krentz Secret Sisters, Donna Tartt The Goldfish, and Gilly Macmillan’s
debut novel What She Knew.
Take
note of patterns, any consistencies, and what the authors seem to be saying—and
more important what is he or she is not saying.
Jayne Ann Krentz
Secret Sisters,
THE
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Madeline and Daphne
were once as close as sisters—until a secret tore them apart. Now it might take
them to their graves.
They knew his name,
the man who tried to brutally attack twelve-year-old Madeline in her
grandmother's hotel. They thought they knew his fate. He wouldn't be bothering
them anymore...ever.Still their lives would never be the same.
Madeline has
returned to Washington after her grandmother's mysterious death. And at the
old, abandoned hotel—a place she never wanted to see again—a dying man’s last
words convey a warning: the secrets she and Daphne believed buried forever have
been discovered.
Now, after almost
two decades, Madeline and Daphne will be reunited in friendship and in fear.
Unable to trust the local police, Madeline summons Jack Rayner, the hotel chain’s
new security expert. Despite the secrets and mysteries that surround him, Jack
is the only one she trusts...and wants.
Jack is no good at
relationships but he does possess a specific skill set that includes a
profoundly intimate understanding of warped and dangerous minds. With the assistance
of Jack's brother, Abe, a high-tech magician, the four of them will form an
uneasy alliance against a killer who will stop at nothing to hide the truth....
The Goldfinch,
Donna Tartt.
PULITZER
PRIZE WINNER
Theo Decker, a
13-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his
mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend.
Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who
don’t know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his longing for his
mother, he clings to the one thing that reminds him of her: a small,
mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the
underworld of art.
As an adult, Theo
moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of
an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love—and at the center
of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.
The Goldfinch is a
mesmerizing, stay-up-all-night and tell-all-your-friends triumph, an
old-fashioned story of loss and obsession, survival and self-invention, and the
ruthless machinations of fate.
Gilly Macmillan
What She Knew.
THE
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
In her enthralling
debut, Gilly Macmillan explores a mother’s search for her missing son, weaving
a taut psychological thriller as gripping and skillful as The Girl on the Train
and The Guilty One.
In a heartbeat,
everything changes…
Rachel Jenner is walking
in a Bristol park with her eight-year-old son, Ben, when he asks if he can run
ahead. It’s an ordinary request on an ordinary Sunday afternoon, and Rachel has
no reason to worry—until Ben vanishes.
Police are called,
search parties go out, and Rachel, already insecure after her recent divorce,
feels herself coming undone. As hours and then days pass without a sign of Ben,
everyone who knew him is called into question, from Rachel’s newly married
ex-husband to her mother-of-the-year sister. Inevitably, media attention
focuses on Rachel too, and the public’s attitude toward her begins to shift
from sympathy to suspicion.
As she desperately
pieces together the threadbare clues, Rachel realizes that nothing is quite as
she imagined it to be, not even her own judgment. And the greatest dangers may
lie not in the anonymous strangers of every parent’s nightmares, but behind the
familiar smiles of those she trusts the most.
Where is Ben? The
clock is ticking...
The
fewer detail about the plot the better. Draw potential readers in and hook them
so they will buy your book and read your story
