How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over
Our podcast title is “How To Write a Book Description That Gets Readers Tingling All Over” and that just sounds naughty, doesn’t it?
And it is a little naughty because this, my friends, is about selling a book, your book, and that requires being a little bit sexy.
Sexy is something I, Carrie, am very very bad at.
Let’s start by thinking about it this way:
A book description is an advertisement for your book.
Writing a bad ad for your book doesn’t make you a sucky novelist. It just makes you unskilled at that. And that’s okay. You’ve been learning character development and plotting and novel structure and pacing. It’s okay to not know this part of the book world too.
Yet.
Here are the things you need to know about how to write a book description
MAKE IT BETWEEN 150 AND 250 WORDS
You want it to not be as long as the book. Or even as long as a novella. Or even as long as this post.
Any longer? People apparently stop paying attention.
FOCUS ON THE BARE PLOT MINIMUM AND THE HERO/PROTAGONIST
Show us how the main character’s decision has set them toward the adventure of the book.
MAKE IT IN THE THIRD PERSON
The third person is when you talk about other people and don’t use the “I.”
So,
Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, little did they know, it was a zombie.
Not
We adopted a zombie hamster.
DO NOT BE CHEESY
You don’t want to go all fancy-pants on the book description. Stay away from adverbs and adjectives and a zillion clauses. Simple wins.
So, don’t write:
In the adorable town of Bar Harbor, Maine where tourists avidly romp in the summer and locals stoically manage the hard winters beneath the mini mountains and rocky coast, two hard-working podcasters tried to adopt a small rodent.
HOOK THEM IN
Book hooks happen in the first pages of the story, but they also need to happen in story descriptions.
A good way to do this is to show how your hero is unlikely to achieve their goal on their adventure.
Absolutely clueless podcasters Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, hopelessly hoping for something easy to love. Little did they know that Hammy the Hamster was a zombie.
MAKE YOUR WORD CHOICE COUNT AND WORK FOR THE BOOK
If you use one or two words that are emotional and full of power, you can impact the reader and make them want your book.
Our book looks like some quirky fantasy, right? We know that from the plot.
If it was a mystery, we might use a word like MURDER.
Absolutely clueless podcasters Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, hopelessly hoping for something easy to love. Little did they know that Hammy the Hamster was a zombie. When people in their town start showing up murdered, hanging upside down from street signs, it’s up to them to keep Hammy from taking the blame and finding the real murderer.
Or if it was a young adult novel, we might use TEEN and some coming of age words in there.
Absolutely clueless teen podcasters Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar decided to adopt a hamster, hopelessly hoping for something easy to love. Little did they know that Hammy the Hamster was a zombie. Figuring out how to be brave enough to protect Hammy from the outside world could keep them together forever or push them apart . . . for good.
You want to write a description that works with your genre.
HERE IS A QUICK EXAMPLE
Two podcasters. One zombie hamster. And a little Maine town about to host a million tourists.
Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar weren’t expecting that the hamster they’d adopted to help their podcast ratings would end up a zombie. Or that it would threaten all the tourists heading in to celebrate Acadia National Park’s bicentennial.
Now, these clueless podcasters, looking for a way out of their podunk town have a choice: find a way to get people to listen to them and protect both the tourists and Hammy the Hamster or just give up and hunker down with some Doritos (Hammy’s favorite) before it’s too late.
The future of Bar Harbor, Maine—and a million tourists—depend on them.
DOG TIP FOR LIFE
Hook ‘em and they’ll buy your book. In dog world, they’ll give you a treat when you hook ‘em. Show them what they need but bring them along, wanting more.
PLACE TO SUBMIT
These are from Duotrope which has an AMAZING list. You should check it out.
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Writing Exercise:
This one is just a simple prompt from Writers Connection
“The Whispering Forest: A forest speaks to those who listen. What secrets does it share, and what price must you pay for its wisdom?”
SHOUT OUT!
The music we’ve clipped and shortened in this podcast is awesome and is made available through the Creative Commons License.
Here’s a link to that and the artist’s website. Who is this artist and what is this song? It’s “Summer Spliff” by Broke For Free.