The blurb of your book should do a few simultaneous things:
- hook in your target audience,
- repel people who definitely aren’t your target audience,
- and set expectations for those who go on to read your book.
All three of these things are very important. They have an impact on who is reading your book, and they can influence the reading experience of those people. This, in turn, can impact the reviews your book gets and whether readers are keen to read more of your work.
You might think that you don’t want to repel anyone from reading your book—but there’s not a single book in the world that is to everyone’s taste. Trying to appeal to everyone will result in your blurb appealing to no one. Repelling people who aren’t going to enjoy your book is a natural (and welcome) side effect of a blurb that gives an accurate impression of your story.
On the flip side, if your blurb is misleading (and this often happens unintentionally), it might be attracting the wrong people—and repelling those who would love your book. It can also alter how readers are approaching your story. If the blurb makes them think that it’s going to be a murder mystery, but it turns out to be more of an action thriller, lots of readers are going to be frustrated and disappointed—and the ones who would have enjoyed an action thriller may have passed on picking up the book in the first place.
The great thing about being an indie author is that you have complete control over your blurb and the way you market your book. You just need to make sure that what a stranger sees when they read your blurb is what you’re intending them to see.
That’s where getting feedback before releasing your blurb into the wild is so important. Regardless of whether or not you get professional feedback to ensure your blurb packs a punch, it’s important to ask for feedback from readers. Get friends, family and fellow writers to read your blurb and ask them for their impressions. Feedback from people who aren’t already familiar with your story is likely to be particularly valuable.
To get the most useful answers, don’t just ask them whether they would read your book based on the blurb: you’re likely to receive a chorus of polite ‘yeses’ and no more information than that. Instead, come prepared with some targeted questions, such as:
- What genre would you say my book is, based on this blurb?
- Did you get any other impressions about what type of book it is? (E.g. serious or light-hearted? Action-packed or more character-focused?)
- Could you summarise the premise back to me? (Not as a memory test, but to see what details stuck out to them and whether they got an accurate impression of your story at the concept level.)
If multiple people give you unexpected answers, that’s a good sign that you need to revise your blurb to make sure it clearly represents your book’s genre, tone and premise.
Another good question to ask is:
- Was there anything that was unclear or didn’t make sense to you?
This can highlight wording or story details that might need clarifying.
If you know that the people you’re asking are in your target audience, you could also ask them:
- What parts of the blurb caught your attention the most?
- Was there anything that would make you hesitate to pick the book up?
For some, the answers to these questions might be about the general premise of the story, or specific story or character details. Others may mention the tone of the blurb (e.g. if it’s humorous or serious), or titles that you’ve compared your novel to. In these latter cases, it’s especially important to make sure that the blurb is reflecting your book accurately, otherwise those readers may be going in with the wrong expectations.
Everyone’s tastes are going to be individual, so you don’t necessarily need to change your blurb based on one person’s feedback. For example: if your friend says that she loved the sound of your main character and premise but was a bit hesitant about the books you’ve compared your story to, that might just be her personal reading preferences. But if a handful of people say the same thing, then maybe something is a little bit off and you might want to consider making a change.
If you’d like a helping hand with your blurb from an experienced editing professional, then look no further! I offer blurb critiques so you can make sure that you’re making your book sound irresistible to your target audience. All proceeds go to good causes this Pride month!
