How to write a blurb or book description

Sell more books with these writing strategies

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

This is the preface to my revised book marketing guide, you can find the whole series on Medium or download the free PDF.

Your Sales Description

Your blurb or sales description has two main functions: it needs to speak both human and robot. In other words, it has to include the right keywords and some SEO boosters to help the book even show up, by telling Amazon what the book is and who it’s for.

And then, assuming it does show up, and real people are actually viewing the page, it has to convince them to buy. Confused readers don’t purchase, so the biggest mistake is to add a plot summary that focuses on the story or conflict, but never establishes the genre or audience.

There are a lot of formulas for writing a blurb, and services that can help write or edit one for you, but these are hit and miss. My best blurbs often come months or years after publishing, when I’ve figured out the true heart of the story: the core conflict that holds it all together. Boiling this down to a few phrases can be tricky, and it’s very difficult to look at your own work objectively and write a powerful blurb.