A book blurb is a great way to market your story to potential readers. You’ll often find this being written as the summary on the back of the book or available as a description on an author’s website. You can actually see this in action on this page of my website where I talk about my series, The Fallen Age Saga. Either way, writing a book blurb is a really important part of the marketing process and the writing process. It allows for you to create a summary that draws readers in, gets them interested, and showcases what readers can expect to read about once they open the first page. So, today’s post will teach you how to write an effective, engaging, and interesting book blurb.
What is the Point of a Book Blurb?
A book blurb is a short description that entices readers to pick up your book. It’s not supposed to be a summary of the plot of your book and it shouldn’t be written as a summary either. The entire goal is to highlight the main conflict and surround it with an air of mystery that gets people to want to read your book to figure out what happens next.
A book blurb should include a hook, the main characters that are very relevant to the story, what sort of challenge the characters are going to face, what the tone of the story is, and a bit of a cliffhanger at the end to get readers to actually go ahead and read your story.
As you can see with Malware, Book 1 of my series, here’s what the blurb reads like:
“Blide Stevens is the stuff of nightmares. Living his days on the deep world of DarkNet, Blide is known as Malware, a force of revenge and judgment that takes down traffickers, serial killers, and anyone he deems immoral and evil. And he enjoys every second of it.
However, all it takes is for one grave mistake to land him behind bars and now, the CIA has taken an interest in him and his skills. A serial killer named the Annihilator has been targeting important government officials, and chaos is beginning to spread across American soil. The government wants Malware on their side. However, Blide quickly learns that the Annihilator is simply a piece of a puzzle. A puzzle that he’s been chasing after for years. A puzzle that involves a black hole of corruption, violence, ancient demons, alien religions, magic, and a conflict that spans across time and space itself. And his role in it all is far deeper than he ever could’ve imagined.
In the first installment of The Fallen Age Saga, nothing is as it seems. And even if you take one step forward, you’re already a mile back anyways.”
You can see that I’ve introduced the main character, Blide Stevens, and the fact that he is a sort of online vigilante named Malware. Then, I’ve introduced something that pushes Blide towards the main conflict that is spanning time and space itself and how he is far more involved than he knows. Finally, I mention how “nothing is as it seems. And even if you take one step forward, you’re already a mile back anyways.” This is a play on the one step forward, two steps back saying and it shows how there are very high stakes at play in the story.
How to Write an Effective Book Blurb
Take Your Audience Into Consideration
When you’re going to write a blurb for your story, you want to think about who your target audience is, what they want, and what they expect to see from books of your genre. You’ll find that fans of thrillers want suspense and high stakes, fans of romance want to see that the story will have the tension they want, and fans of fantasy and sci-fi will want stories with epic quests and intense world building.
Since my story is a fantasy with sci-fi and thriller elements, you see that all play out in the blurb of Malware. There’s a guy who’s been recruited by the government to take down a serial killer and the guy is a bad person himself, however, there is something far beyond just a regular ol’ serial killer at play. I had to consider several genres worth of audiences, but when combined, it makes a lot more sense.
Hook the Readers
The first sentence of the blurb is a big deal, as is the first of anything. The first page of your book is important, but before your reader is likely to flip open to the first page, they’re probably going to flip to the back and see what the book is even about. So, you have to reel them in ASAP.
As you can see in my blurb, the first sentence is just: “Blide Stevens is the stuff of nightmares.”
Immediately, this sparks intrigue. Why is he the stuff of nightmares? Who is Blide? What does he do? Why is he a nightmare in the first place?
This should then be enough to get the reader to move to sentence #2, which is still very important. “Living his days on the deep world of DarkNet, Blide is known as Malware, a force of revenge and judgment that takes down traffickers, serial killers, and anyone he deems immoral and evil” is the second sentence of my blurb, which reveals more about the character, more about his position in society, and more about the world building in the story.
Soldat, Book 2 of my series has this as the first sentence: “Joel Vandernord’s life just got turned completely upside down.” That entices readers because firstly, who is Joel, why does he matter, and what happened in his life that has the capacity to change so much for him?
The Main Character(s) Need to be Mentioned
Your hook can include the main characters or the main characters can be included after the hook, but before the reader finishes the blurb, they need to be fully aware of the characters that will be important in your story.
In Book 1, we know that Blide is important and we know that he is the main character. In Book 2 we know that Joel is important and that he is the main character. Of course, being a series, there’s a level of mystery because what role will Blide have in Book 2? What role does Joel have? Still, when we look at each book as a separate entity, I as the reader am aware of who the main character is.
Book 2’s blurb reads like this:
“Joel Vandernord’s life just got turned completely upside down.
After a series of destructive and violent alien invasions against Earth, the world’s top leaders have mobilized their armies to fight against the mass threat. In order to avoid reinstating a draft, the United States decides to develop a program dubbed ‘Soldat’ that would take death row inmates and place them in the military to be genetically modified and trained to fight.
And the former Blackridge member just found himself at the center of the whole mess.
He’s been falsely accused of murder. But he can’t do anything about it.
And as the world begins to descend into chaos, the threat of nuclear warfare and alien proxy wars continues to decimate the balance of everything.
In what may be the most destructive conflict in Earth’s history, there are more powers at play than anyone could have ever anticipated.”
We see that Joel is in Soldat because he was falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death. We also know that the conflict from Book 1 is still going forward in Book 2 and we know that it’s only getting worse because it’s going to be the most destructive conflict ever. We know that Joel plays a role in this conflict somehow.
Mention the Main Conflict
The blurb of your book needs to mention to the readers what the main conflict of the story is and how that main conflict is going to pan out in the story. You want to show how high the stakes are and why the reader needs to care about this conflict in the first place.
Going back to Book 1, we see that the main conflict is this: “However, Blide quickly learns that the Annihilator is simply a piece of a puzzle. A puzzle that he’s been chasing after for years. A puzzle that involves a black hole of corruption, violence, ancient demons, alien religions, magic, and a conflict that spans across time and space itself. And his role in it all is far deeper than he ever could’ve imagined.”
We see that Blide is going to have to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes, as well as what his role is and why he is so heavily involved in this story.
Hone in on the Stakes Behind the Story
The stakes of the conflict are important to highlight in your blurb. The readers need to understand what is the situation that’s at risk and why they should even care about it. High stakes conflicts, even if your story is more of a cute romcom, still exist. The way the stakes are portrayed differs across genres, so for a fantasy story your stakes may include a war, but for a romance it may include finding love. Whatever it may be, highlight the stakes in your blurb.
Make the Tone Clear
The blurb should showcase what the tone of your book is going to be. You want to try to throw in buzzwords that are related to certain genres. For example, my series is a fantasy, and it leans heavily towards being a grimdark. That’s why you see words like “violence” “evil” and such sorts of words in the blurb. The tone is very clear: This is not a book of happy thoughts and moments–there’s A LOT at stake.
Make the Genre Known to Readers
The genre of the story is also supposed to be revealed in a way in the blurb. You don’t need to outright say that it’s a fantasy story or sci-fi, but the words you use and things you talk about in the blurb need to clearly indicate to the readers why they would be interested in this story.
As you can see in my blurb, there’s mentions of technology, magic, and war. This clearly indicates to the reader that they’ll get some fantasy, some sci-fi, and some thriller happening in this book. It also indicates that there are high stakes, which tends to be more present in action-packed stories in the fantasy genre.
End with Uncertainty
The last piece of your blurb should be indicative of something uncertain. This could be posed as a question or even posed as some sort of unclear statement. Like I said in the beginning, the blurb of Book 1 of my series ends with this line: “In the first installment of The Fallen Age Saga, nothing is as it seems. And even if you take one step forward, you’re already a mile back anyways.” Obviously, something is amiss and nothing is as it seems.
Book 2’s blurb ends with this line: “In what may be the most destructive conflict in Earth’s history, there are more powers at play than anyone could have ever anticipated.” This is obviously something very ominous and the reader can see that there’s something terribly wrong about to happen in the world.
Make Sure Your Blurb Isn’t SUPER Long
A blurb is not supposed to be an entire summary of your book. It needs to be as short, concise, brief 150-200-ish words that have everything the reader needs to know about your story to want to read it. You can’t reveal too much, but you also can’t reveal too little. Avoid the details that aren’t very necessary and focus on the things that will make readers interested in your story.
Before you head on out, check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get more info on my latest updates, posts, WIPs, book releases and more!