A couple years ago, I led a workshop for BAIPA on “‘How to Write a Killer Book Blurb” and I’ll be leading a similar workshop at Book Passage next Saturday, May 18 at 10 am, for the California Writers Club–Marin. Register here. (Tickets are $5 for CWC members, $10 for non-members.)
Like the BAIPA workshop, we’ll be doing live edits and rewrites of participants’ blurbs. We’ll put the blurbs up on the screen and collectively work to make them stronger.
How to Write a Killer Book Blurb
In the olden days, before self-publishing, websites, and social media, publishers wrote book blurbs. Now, if you’re self-published, you are the publisher and you need to write a killer blurb so your book stands out in today’s crowded marketplace. Your blurb is more important in attracting readers to your book than anything except your cover and title.
The blurb, also called the book description, generally shows up on the back cover of your book and on your online sales pages.
A compelling blurb can be equally important before you’ve written your book, because it can guide you as you write.
So how do you distill your several-hundred page book into one or more memorable paragraphs?
You’ll have to come to the workshop to find out. But here’s a short preview.
Preview of “How to Write a Killer Book Blurb”
- A blurb is not a synopsis, but a promise that persuades potential readers they must read your book. You reveal enough to entice your readers, but hide enough so they’ll pay to find out more. You also want to share setting, genre, and tone. Is it light and funny or dark and tense? Let’s look at some examples.
An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price.
Until something goes wrong. . . .
- While the Jurassic Park example did not do this, generally, you want to introduce your protagonist and share the conflict he or she faces and the stakes. Getting their emotions in the mix is desirable as well, so the potential reader cares enough to buy the book. Here’s an example from my third novel.
What if your father asked you to kill him?
Psychologist Lamar Rose’s father is suffering from cancer and dementia, and wants his son to help him end his life. Lamar refuses, but his father keeps asking, and he relents.
Then, from the pulpit of the church at his father’s memorial, his sister accuses him of murder. When I Killed My Father is a page-turner with a conscience, about a man caught between what is compassionate and what is legal. Though the novel addresses heavy and provocative issues like mercy killing, dementia, and family strife, it’s entertaining and moves with the pace of a thriller.
Hope to see you Saturday. Again, register here.
P.S. One more blurb, from my recently published fourth novel, Pirates of Sausalito. (You’ll notice there’s no protagonist in this blurb. Like Jurassic Park, the situation is a bigger story than any one person’s experience. I tried some blurbs focusing on one of the main characters, but it didn’t seem as compelling.)
In the 1970s, the “houseboat wars” erupt in Sausalito on the site of Marinship, the abandoned World War II shipyard. Hippies and squatters are living free on houseboats in a ramshackle shantytown, and greedy developers are determined to evict them and build new docks to attract affluent residents.
The counterculture is in full flower and the houseboaters, fearing their community will be destroyed, resist eviction with street theater, civil disobedience, monkeywrenching, and more. Like climbing into dinghies and pushing away police boats with oars. Like sinking a barge to block a pile driver. All in front of TV cameras!
Then, someone gets stabbed.
Pirates of Sausalito is fiction, but inspired by true events. As Larry Clinton, former president of the Sausalito Historical Society, said, “If it didn’t happen exactly this way, it could have.”
Imagine Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test meets Murder, She Wrote. One part hippies grooving on the waterfront and fighting the man, one part murder mystery.
