Writing a New Blurb
Hey everyone, this week on the blog I thought I’d talk about writing a new blurb. If you follow/interact with me on social media, you might have noticed me launch a new blurb for my first historical fiction novel, The Boy from the Snow. I thought I’d talk a bit more about blurbs in general and why I decided to rewrite my blurb in particular. First of all, without further ado, here’s my shiny new blurb!
You can watch this trailer for more of a flavour of the book.
The Purpose of a Burb
Blurbs are a vital part of the author sharing their book. The front cover usually grabs people first. After that, the next step is to flip to the back of the blurb to read the blurb, or scroll down to read the blurb online.
When I first sent my blurb to my publishers (I’m published by a small press), I didn’t really know what I was doing. I thought a blurb was a short summary of the book. My main focus was providing a summary which didn’t contain any spoilers. That’s part of it, but I missed the main point of the blurb – to hook people. To be fair to my publishers, the blurb they suggested was much stronger. However, I wanted to go with mine as theirs contained a couple of minor spoilers and like I said, I didn’t really realise then what the purpose of a blurb was.
The purpose of a blurb is to grab the reader. I discovered the true power of a blurb a couple of months ago. An author friend of mine had been to the 20 books to 50k conference, an annual author conference happening in LA. My friend mentioned how lots of the talks had been recorded online. I’m not sure if the videos are still there but definitely worth a look.
The talk was on how to find your readers. The speaker spent a large part of the video talking about how to write blurbs.
Why I needed to change my blurb
A couple of years ago, I upped a gear a bit with marketing. I launched a new website, started a newsletter, Facebook page, Facebook group and Instagram account. Despite this, the cogs haven’t turned properly. I’ve felt like I’ve been doing ‘all the right things’ but nobody was going from ‘interested’ to ‘buying’. All the ingredients were there, but the cake jut wasn’t coming out right.
Watching this 20k video, it was like the light went on. I realised my original blurb was holding me back. If I ran a bookshop where my books were stocked, people would be coming in, possibly picking up my book, put then putting it down and walking back down again. The blurb just wasn’t exciting enough to grab people. I needed to make a change.
If I’m honest, while the video about blurbs was important, it was also brutal. It wasn’t a fun discover to discover the blurb was the problem. I realised I could shout about my books on social media and ‘do everything right’. If the blurb was the issue, then hardly anyone would go on to actually buy my book.
However, I also need to remain positive and kind to myself. Hardly anyone knows what they’re doing when they first step out doing something new. Besides, I also need to remember I have sold several copies of The Boy from the Snow since it was first published. Not many compared to well-selling authors, but it’s not like it’s stayed on a shelf gathering dust for the last four years. However, a problematic blurb doesn’t negate my book and that people have bought it and given me good feedback. In fact, it’s not too bad really that people have bought and liked the story, despite having a blurb which isn’t so great.
Launching my new Blurb
So, it was time to change my blurb. I looked up blurbs in my genre and began to got a feel for how blurbs worked. I began to write out – several times – what my blurb should actually look like.
Most importantly, I received a lot feedback from my lovely writing group who were happy to help me. After several rounds of editing and feedback, I had a new blurb ready to go. I submitted it to my publishers and was excited to see it go live.
However, it ended up being almost a month between submitting it to my publishers and the blurb going live on Amazon. I’m still not entirely sure why, just that there were a few technical glitches and a couple of issues with formatting. Still, it finally changed last week!
The Boy from the Snow Book Birthday
I’m so excited that the new blurb went live last week, because it has coincided with the book birthday of The Boy from the Snow! Today, 25th January, marks four years since my historical fiction novel was published.
To celebrate, I’m having a Facebook Live event. Hit the link if you’d like to come – it would be fantastic to see some of you in the chat! There will be some fun and games and chatting about my book with my husband, who is kindly hosting the event. See you there!
Thanks for Reading!
Thanks so much for dropping by! While you’re here you can check out my other blog posts, including those in my writing craft series and in my author journey.
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Till next time,
Maria 🙂