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Singing a Book’s Praises with Back Cover Copy
By Rachel Carrington
How many times has the back cover copy of a book caught
your attention and intrigued you enough to make you have
to buy the book? How many other books have you put back
because the copy bored you or sounded like a repeat of the
last book you read?
More and more authors are choosing to self-publish, but
along with the independence they gain, they lose a valuable
asset—a publishing company's marketing department. Those are
the folks who usually create one of the most important selling
tools in the industry—the back cover copy or the blurb, if
you will.
When writing copy for a book, the main goal is to entice
readers to buy that book, usually in one-hundred fifty words
or less. That’s not an easy task for some writers, but if you
can use powerful words and phrases to capture the attention of
potential buyers, you have an open door to this market.
Before you begin writing back cover copy for books, spend some
time at your local bookstore or library and read a few book
covers. Get a feel for each genre, pay attention to the words
used, and ask yourself if you would have written the copy the
same way.
A reader doesn’t want to know everything that’s going to happen
between the front and back cover of that book. They want just
enough information to make them want to find out what’s going
to happen, and your job is to make it difficult for them to
put the book down and walk away.
Now, start practicing. Head on over to Amazon.com, take some
of the more boring book descriptions, and check out the sales
rankings. If they’re in the millions or even high six digits,
you’re heading in the right direction.
It’s not difficult to find the self-published books. Createspace,
Lulu, Iuniverse, and xlibris are the most popular publishing
outlets available to individual authors. So if you look for
books published by those companies, you’ll have your foot in
the door.
Take that boring copy and make it zing. Replace the passive
verbs with active and polish those few words until you would
want to buy the book. This is where your creativity really comes
into play. Make the readers think, feel, and dream, if possible,
but most importantly, make them want to buy that book.
Once you’ve recreated two or three of the back cover copies,
approach some self-published authors (most of them have their
website linked to their names at Amazon) and tell them you
believe your copy could help them. Show them your examples.
Let them choose the better copy. Odds are good it will be yours.
Now, tell them you can do the same for their book description.
Even with practice, you’re still a novice in this area so you’ll
want to keep your cost low. You certainly don’t want to scare
off the self-published authors, many of whom are operating with
a tight budget. Ten dollars would be a good starting point, but
once you build your clientele and excel, you can claim as much
as or more than $100 per blurb.
You can increase your portfolio by finding more self-published
authors at: http://www.selfpublishedauthors.com. Just click on
Memberlist or visit Smashwords. If the book isn’t associated
with a company name, it was probably published by an independent
author which gives you a wellspring of potential clients. Once
you have several self-published authors utilizing your services,
you’ll be ready to approach the smaller publishers who can use
your talents!
BIO
Residing in historical Charleston, South Carolina, Rachel
Carrington is a published author of fantasy and paranormal
romance as well as romantic suspense. She has written for
Ellora’s Cave, Red Sage Publishing, and Samhain Publishing.
Also a freelance editor/writer, she has written non-fiction
articles for The Writer, Writer’s Journal, Absolute Write,
Funds for Writers, and Writer’s Weekly.
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