I should begin this week’s update by being clear about my terms. In recent years the word “blurb” has commonly come to refer to what most of us in the industry call “endorsements”, that is to say recommendations by third parties that are reproduced on or in your book in order to help sell it. This is not what we are talking about today — although we doubtless will talk about them in future.
Rather, what we mean by “blurbs” is the editorial description of a book, that explains briefly what it is about, and which is usually printed on the back cover or the inside of the jacket, as well as being reproduced on webpages, flyers and so on to promote the book. Sometimes these texts will vary slightly in different contexts, but typically they are either identical, or slight variations on a theme. In any case, the purpose of the blurb is to convince a prospective reader to take the next step. This might be looking inside the book if they are looking at a physical copy (or using a digital look inside function on a website), or perhaps checking for reviews online. In some rare cases they may even go straight ahead and buy the book on the strength of the blurb.
You can see, then, that this text is a critical element in selling a book. How then, should we go about writing it?
Make every word count
The fewer words you use to explain your book, the more impactful those words will tend to be. For the most part your blurb can afford to be between 100 and 300 words, but you should only be pushing the upper end of that limit if you absolutely have to. People are far more likely to read a short blurb in full, and much more likely to be persuaded by it. Don’t forget, you’re really trying to tempt them to read further, not explain the entire book to them.
This means not over-explaining things, or trying to cover too much in the blurb, but it also means trying to say what you do say with as much economy as possible. Avoid qualifiers and intensifiers unless they are strictly necessary. Your book should not be “trying” or “attempting” to do anything. Nor should anything be “maybe”, “possibly”, “probably” or “quite”, except when making specific factual statements.
Open with a clear statement of intent
Catch your prospective reader’s attention early, by making a bold statement about your book. The clearer and simpler the better.
When I worked for Routledge the house style was to have a short paragraph, no more than two sentences long that would do this. While I wouldn’t want to be too prescriptive, this is a pretty good rule of thumb. Treat this short first paragraph as an elevator pitch for the book in and of itself. This will particularly yield dividends if your book appears in search results or other summaries that pull only a small amount of the text from the blurb.
Benefits, not features
The main body of your blurb can then expand a little to cover the key benefits the book offers to the reader. To deploy an old marketing cliché, you should always to try to emphasise benefits over features. That is, you should tell the prospective reader what they stand to gain by reading the book, rather than just telling them what is in it. Sometimes with relatively specialised books this can feel a bit of a fine distinction to make, but it’s always worth keeping this adage in mind as you go through your blurb text.
So, for instance, if your book contains case studies, those are features, the benefit is that in analysing those case studies you show readers [whatever it is your case studies demonstrate]. If your book contains practical advice, that’s a feature, the benefit is what will be better for the reader as a consequence of following that advice.
In the abstract this can sound a little laboured, but the practice of writing this way sharpens your sense of what it is about the book you’re really trying to stress to readers and why. Done well it is also a much more persuasive way to write, because you’re not just telling your prospective reader what is in the book, you’re telling them why they should read it.
Conclude by stating the intended readership
I’d say this is a bit “your mileage may vary”, but for academic and scholarly books — even, or perhaps especially, those with aspirations to reach a somewhat broader audience — it is generally a good idea to state outright who the book is for. There are times when you have to be careful with this, for instance if too specifically naming your primary readership might deter potential secondary readerships, but more often than not it is helpful for prospective readers to see themselves reflected back at them.
Try to avoid anything so vague as to be meaningless, “general readers” (to take one example) has long been a bête noire of mine for this reason. A formulation along the lines of “students and scholars of the Terminator franchise, and anyone with an interest in the action movies of the late 1980s” can often work reasonably well. This pinpoints the primary readership clearly, while also giving some sense of why a broader group of people might find the book interesting.
Use the active voice
It is almost always better to write most things in the active, rather than passive, voice. This goes double for any text aimed at selling something. There should be agency in your sentences ascribed to you as the author (see below), nothing should be just being done to the reader by an unspecified actor.
So for example, avoid sentences like “the reader will be given an in-depth analysis of the films of James Cameron” and instead try to structure them more along the lines of “[the author] analyses the films of James Cameron in depth…”
Avoid “this book” or repeating the title
As with using the passive voice, this can be a habit for academic authors in particular. “This book” doesn’t do anything, it can’t as it’s an inanimate object. Rather you, the named author, will be the one arguing, analysing, presenting, advocating, or explaining. General convention is to use the author’s family name without a title “Schwarzenegger” rather than “Governor Schwarzenegger” or “Arnold Schwarzenegger”. This tends to sound authoritative without being overly formal, but sometimes another formulation will sound better, and this is essentially an aesthetic choice.
Similarly, avoid repeating the title of your book in your blurb. Readers of your blurb will already be able to see what your book is called, and will find it grating to have it repeated at them. You shouldn’t be making the book the subject of a sentence anyway, but repeating the title in the blurb text has a similar effect to when somebody you’re talking to keeps repeating your name (or worse, their name) to try and imply familiarity. It feels artificial and jarring.
Write in the second person address as much as possible
This can feel quite unnatural to many authors, especially if you are used to writing in a more academic context. But just as it is more persuasive to make you — the author — the subject of the sentence, it is also more persuasive to make “you” — the putative reader — the object of the sentence. This is the difference between “this book will give the reader” and “Schwarzenegger gives you”. The second is naturally that much more convincing, not least because it takes advantage of the very intimate nature of reading to incept (albeit very obviously) the idea into the putative reader that they, the “you” referred to, are who the book is written for.
Try to use strong verbs
I mentioned earlier that you should minimise qualifiers, intensifiers and caveats. We’ve also talked about writing in the active voice and in the second person address, to imply a personal rapport with the prospective reader. Another important element of writing persuasive copy that can be counter-intuitive if you’re accustomed to academic writing, is using strong declarative verbs.
It’s easier to demonstrate this than it is to describe it, so here are some examples: Give, or provide, don’t offer; analyse, interpret, synthesise, and conclude, don’t simply discuss; help, or advise, don’t “be useful for”. This is often a matter of individual judgement, but the question to ask yourself is always “is there a more robust, more direct way of phrasing this?”. If there is, it will likely be a question of removing qualifiers and replacing verbs with “stronger” ones.
Use technical terminology if necessary, but avoid jargon if possible
I’ve talked about this previously in the context of what we mean when we say our books should be rigorous and readable, and it applies all the more so here. There will be occasions where you need to use key words or buzz phrases in order to indicate to your prospective readers that you know what you’re talking about. You don’t want to look like an amateur by not using these code words. More often than not, however, it is preferable to use simple English to express ideas clearly, especially in the context of a blurb where space is limited and you’re trying to catch the attention of your reader. The more cognitive load they have in interpreting jargon or complex terminology in order too understand the description of the book and why they should read it, the less likely they are to be persuaded. Sometimes this is a trade off between clarity and perceived authority, but whichever side you come down on in a given case, make sure you do so intentionally.
That’s it from us for this week. If thinking about writing blurbs has gotten you ready to think about writing books, do drop us a line on proposals@tbarnpress.com.
