This post by Nicholas C. Rossis originally appeared on his site on 5/2/15.
The inspiration for this post came from a little gem I found on the Passive Guy’s Newsletter (if you aren’t already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? It’s free!). After some heavy editing, it ended up as this post.
The original post came from the Self Publishing Review, if you wish to see it in its entirety.
Writing a Book Blurb
By far, the weakest part of many self-published books is the synopsis*. Writing a decent blurb is an art form totally separate from writing a book.
Authors, myself included, often feel this is their least favorite part of the process. It can make you feel icky writing superlatives about your own book. At the same time, too many superlatives can literally be icky (“A work of genius” comes to mind). A good blurb needs to strike a balance between being informative, but not too informative, salesy, but not too salesy, while somehow seducing a stranger into spending money. It’s difficult, to say the least.
That said, there are some very common errors that show up time and again, and are pretty easy to change.
Read the full post on The Power of Six.