Hopefully, this episode will help you figure that out.
Now some people say to write it from your main characters perspective and others say write it from a third person perspective. I think you should see how your sales go. Especially if you’re running amazon ads, you could try one version for awhile and then try another.
But no matter from what perspective, you need certain things in your description.
First, You can use a bolded headline in Amazon to proclaim any awards or anything important your reader should know.
Then, you definitely need a hook because on that book page you only get 6 lines of text to get them to click the read more or to click the buy button. If you’re creating a headine in bold and giving it a space, that leaves you 4 lines of text.
But how do you write that hook? There’s no perfect one way to do that. But consider what’s unique about your story? What’s at stake?
Besides your hook you need to describe your Protagonist and what obstacles will they be facing. Be specific about those obstacles.
You also want to make sure you’re giving away the genre in the description.
And if you haven’t mentioned it in the hook, tell your reader What’s at stake…
And see if you can end your description with A Page Turner ending – a question or unknown that makes the reader want to open up the book or more importantly, to buy it.
Author Judith Gaines of the book Wired from the Jade Weeks Series and owner of IndieWriterPro had this to say –
“Book descriptions are short and, they’re about the amazing book you just wrote. So, why is it so hard to write? Because your brain is still engaged in the novel-writing process, it’s time to switch to your marketing brain, the one that knows how to write a book description that entices readers and sells books. That’s right, now that you have the finished manuscript and are set to package it for sales, your book has transformed into a product.
You want to catch the reader’s attention from the first line. What’s the most compelling element of your story? For fiction, that could be the uniqueness of the main character or where the story takes place. You give the reader a peek at the beginning and share the initiating conflict that drives the story.”
Thank you Judith!
Now, let’s talk about SEO, that is Search Engine Optimization. It refers to increasing the chances of someone finding your book when they type something in the search. Of course your keywords that you put into have a lot to do with it but so does your description.
You want your description should be at least 150-200 words long. If it isn’t that long, Add if it’s part of a series, has it won any awards,
And include keywords that your readers might be looking for.
And just like you had your book edited and reviewed, you should get eyes on your book description especially from anyone who’s read the book. And look at the top 10 or so books in your category to see how they’re using their description to get readers.
Judith Gaines has a book description workbook and you can find a link to it in the show notes.
Show Notes:
Judith Gaines Workbook for writing your book description:
https://indiewriterpro.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Book-Description-Workbook-Final.pdf
Judith Gaines novel, Wired
Find Amy River’s books on her website: