September 2022

(Sorry, I thought this was going to be keywords! But, well, no. In order to get keywords you need comps. In order to get comps you need categories. In order to get categories, you need stats.) Stats, Categories, Comps, and Keywords Behind the scenes, there is more work to do. If you have not already […]

So there are a lot of bad book descriptions out there, where the book sells in spite of the book descripton. And of course there are even more banal descriptions, ones that don’t do anything for the book but at least don’t sabotage the reader.  Here are the basic principles: Tell the reader what benefits

You now have a lot of information about your readers and your book. It’s time to write your book description! Let’s take it a step at a time, though. This is not something you need to write perfectly on your first draft. Like any other writing skill, it takes practice to write a good book

This has totally turned into a mini-class on how to think about book sales in general, and I’m not sorry! So something I’ve been working for the last couple of weeks is reading and collecting “wish” stories, as in, “I wish somebody would write this story…” If you ever just want to feel mushy and

One of my biggest jumps in learning how to write book descriptions was learning that the  plot and characters of the book, in the description, were just ways to make a list of qualities about  book hang together.  We write the books we do in order to satisfy our own creative needs, or the creative

Writers seem to fall into two camps regarding their work: The writers who undervalue their work. The writers who overvalue their work. Okay, I’m teasing a little here: most writers fall into both camps. One moment, they’ll undervalue their work and threaten to never write again. The next moment, they’ll be outraged that they don’t

I was at a writer’s workshop once, having breakfast with a group of writers, and one of “my” readers walked past. Not someone I knew was one of my readers, but someone who was easily profilable as someone who had a decent chance of liking my books. She was about my age or a little

Identifying your readers is a complex process, difficult to ascertain, murky at best. Just kidding! But finding out who loves your books does involve paying attention to who your readers are and possibly even asking them questions. My perspective on this issue comes from having written across multiple genres, knowing a lot of other writers

One of the things that working in marketing will teach you: It’s all about the customer, stupid. When you’re selling something, trying to convince a potential customer that they should hire you, or just laying down the groundwork for a future sale, you don’t get a consolation prize for trying really hard.  You either write

(As hinted at earlier, I’m posting some “state of the craft” marketing posts about writing book descriptions that I am writing as I edit V2 of Writing Craft.) Writing a book description for fiction can be a difficult task for a lot of writers. We tend to think, “How do I describe a much longer