Size Matters: the vital importance of back-cover blurb

I suspect, like me, you love a Bookshop.  Personally, I’m not religious in a conventional way, so being in a Bookshop is the closest I get to a spiritual experience.  It’s my church, and I exhibit what you might call ritualistic behaviours whilst inside it.  I don’t pray, sing, receive communion, or make my confession, but I slide the pristine volumes off the shelves with reverence, wonder at their weight in my palm, lovingly absorb the scent and sight of them…and I don’t open them, not even to peek; not until they’re mine, I’ve brought them home, and I’m ready to start reading.  

So, if I don’t open a book and look inside until I’m already committed to it, what makes me pick up a particular tome and purchase that above the many others I’ve perused?  Perhaps the title, although I read a lot of travel reportage and non-fiction politics and history; dry titles are familiar to me, and therefore don’t factor heavily in my decision making.

No, only two things pull me in: the overall appearance of the design – the font, spot gloss that catches the light, embossing you can run a finger over, and an evocative image illustrative of the contents – and, once I’ve drunk that in, what’s the only other thing I do before deciding to buy?  I rotate it gently in careful fingers and read the blurb on the back cover…and that’s what sells it to me.  If I don’t like the blurb then I’m not buying, regardless of the font, feel, and fashion of the front.

A blurb needs to succinctly sum up the premise of the book, whatever genre it falls into.  It must pique the curiosity whilst leaving enough to the imagination to intrigue the reader into parting with their pennies.

Blurb-writing seems to be a bit of an art; a sensationally-salesy short story; literature’s lacy negligee, revealing just enough to titillate, but preserving a modicum of mystery.  A fine balancing act – and viewed by many as more of a challenge than writing the book itself – I genuinely love producing blurbs.  Quite often, writing a few experimental blurbs for a sketchy plot taking shape in my head is the perfect way to determine whether the fledgling will fly.  Having to discipline yourself to cut the waffle, pinpoint pivotal plot turns, and sharpen hooks that’ll snare your reader enables you to understand which parts of your story to bring to the fore; what to keep, and what to cut.  

Blurb-writing is an excellent device to polish your marketing angle, at whatever stage you’re at on your writing journey.  Whether it’s explaining to the lady next door why you spend every day mooning about the house in your pyjamas talking to yourself – ‘Oh, you’re an author!  I just thought you were barmy, dear…’ – submitting to an agent, or pitching a potential publisher, an ability to crisply condense ninety-thousand carefully-crafted words into one punchy paragraph is no mean feat, and a valuable skill to practice. 

I’ve often thought my ideal job would be writing book blurbs for other people’s work.  You don’t suffer all the ups and downs we writers experience daily, as we soar with the flighty muse one moment and shovel our way out of a slough of despond the next, straining to give birth to our little parcels of originality like a rhinoceros in labour.  If all you had to do was read someone else’s hard work and, love or loathe it, make a mockery of their months of effort with a hundred words of showbiz flannel, how effortless would that be?  It’s the literary equivalent of swanning in and singing the limelight-stealing lead vocal on the crowd-pleasing hit single, whilst someone else has had to record all those ‘edgy’ album tracks no one wants to hear at concerts.

Try it tonight.  Limit yourself to 150 words and make each one of them count.  See if it makes you think differently about what’s vital to your plot, and what you can dump without noticing it’s gone.  (I guarantee it’ll be way more than you thought you could safely lose and still retain the integrity of your story.)  Approach your task like a Dragon’s Den presentation – 60 seconds to convince them to slide that stack of cash across the desk and utter the magic words, “I’m in”.

All killer, no filler.