Blurbs & Book Descriptions: Copywriting for Authors

Many authors find writing blurbs or book descriptions difficult. Why is it so hard? Because it requires a different kind of writing than we're familiar with. To write an effective blurb, you need to learn the art of copywriting - a skill that we tend to associate with the marketing and advertising industries. This association makes some authors uncomfortable. But copywriting can be used for good as well as evil.

Blurbs & Book Descriptions presents the copywriting skills a modern author needs and shows how they can be applied to create effective text for promoting novels. Avoiding the underhand tricks used by some advertisers, it emphasises positive marketing techniques. These allow authors to provide a service to genre fiction readers by presenting the information they are seeking when choosing something to read.

Content includes:

• Why Marketing Makes Us Uncomfortable
• Copywriting Basics
• What Are You Selling & Who's Buying?
• Magic Words & Punchy Copy
• Headlines & Taglines
• Loglines & Elevator Pitches
• Content & Structure of a Fiction Blurb
• Blurb Dissections
• What Can We Learn from Movie Trailers?
• Genre Fiction Blurbs
• Blurbs & Loglines for Ensemble Stories & Collections
• Blurbs & Loglines for Series
• Writing a Story Premise or Story Concept
• Non-Fiction Blurbs
• Synopses & Query Letters