How to Write the Perfect Book Blurb for Your Query Letter: Dos and Don'ts
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- čas přidán 29. 05. 2021
- Writing your book blurb (also known as a summary) can be one of the toughest parts of the querying process. But rest assured there are some tried-and-true dos and don'ts that will help you craft the perfect summary of your novel. In this video, I clarify what a book blurb is (and what it isn't) and what it's used for, then offer specific tips for writing one that catches agents' attention.
DOS AND DON'TS FOR WRITING A BOOK BLURB:
05:33 - Do: Introduce the main character(s)
06:44 - Don’t: Use prefatory language
07:32 - Do: Specify the story’s main conflict
09:17 - Don’t: Give away too many details
09:49 - Do: Entice the agent to discover what happens
11:42 - Don’t: Spoil the ending
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GREAT BOOKS ABOUT WRITING/PUBLISHING:
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Alyssa: "Then you know one of the major parts of the query letter is writing up a blurb."
Me: "Yeah, of course. I know that." *sweats*
Thank you, Alyssa. I am a brazilian writer that now lives in Norway. I felt like I am re-starting my career. First because I learned English in the last 3 years. Second because I am in a place where people speak Norwegian. I worked hard with a translator, son now I have a book in English. Thanks to you I understand better the way of publishing in US or Europe. I was completely lost, because in Brazil this works in a very different way (the way I have been working for more than 10 years). Write is my life and this is what I want to do since I was 6 years old. I am studying how to write a Query Letter. I hope I can come back in the future, thank you again and with good news.
I’ve been checking out a lot of your videos lately, they’ve been a big help! I’ve taken notes on query letters, finding an agent, etc.
I feel better about what I need to do going forward, so thanks!
I'm so glad you're finding my videos helpful! Thanks for the kind comment. Wishing you all the best with querying!
Hi Alyssa! You are doing a great work! Really appreciate the help you are creating for first time writers. My name is Ashish Ranjan, I’m from India but I want to publish my book from the big 5. I’m working on a story based on my true life experiences, now it’s almost done with the book and your advices helps a lot 😊
hope you don't mind the spell check, it should read 'your advice' x
Ashish or Hashish?
Great vid! Super insightful! Thanks Alyssa!
Thank you for your advice, Alyssa. I have just revised the end of my blurb...to avoid giving the ending away, haha! Thank you again. :)
Certainly very good tips here. I think I may go through you when I write a blurb.
Every time I ask in various groups, I always get responses saying its too short, its too long, not enough details. So frustrating to find the right balance to nearly please everyone.
I know exactly how you feel!
Did you ever find a sweet spot?
@@AR-mu4zq Only on my wife.
@@rowan7929 Hey, that's all that counts, am I right! 🤭😉
Thank you for this! Wish I’d have found this long ago.
Thank you!
Happy holidays
revealed truths by example. thanks.
Just about to write the blurb now, it's the last of these documents i need for the book, besides chosing the sample pages, which i'm still unsure of.
Hi Alyssa. Great video, thanks. I was wondering if it's better to email the blurb or send it as an attachment? Thanks.
Hi Alyssa, I think this sounds really interesting, I love academia and secrets revealed! 've read that agents prefer blurbs written in present tense. Is there any truth to this? My book is written in third person past so it seems natural to write the blurb in that tense as well. Thanks!
I understand this blurb style is for query letters, not for online book listings. Very different style than what others are suggesting.
Wrong. It's identical to how it's on amazon.
Which, of course, means that this isn't a query letter blurb at all. Which means that this video's completely useless.
Hi Alyssa: You're a gift to new writers such as me. What if you started your book 30 years ago and recently pulled it out, entered it into a laptop and finished it, but can't find any similar books out now. Mine is a about a couple where the husband and others significant to the wife are in heaven and need to save her from suicide. I've been submitting, and referencing The Midnight Library as loosely similar because of the extraordinary environment of both books; heaven and a library of lives. I'm wondering if I should stop and start another project as there doesn't seem to be a market for such a book as mine.
Thank you for your insights. Your suggestions are helpful. I would like to ask for clarification, though. I was taught to never begin a sentence with the words "but" or "and". Yet, this blurb uses both words to begin sentences. Has this rule of writing and grammar changed?
Have you read Robert Ryan's book?
Hi. How would you treat a blurb for a collection of Short Stories?
Do you critique query letters?
Under which category was this book placed? Young Adult, New Adult (if that even exist nowadays) or Adult. I'm asking because my protagonist is a freshman or a sophomore in college (haven't definitely decided) and I don't know how to pitch it in terms of age category.
I'd appreciate your response.
Hello Alyssa; I don't know if you have ever addressed this topic, querying agents for a second book in a series. After being turned down by approximately one dozen agents for the first and going on to self-publishing, I'm seeking representation for the second book. Is it possible to hook an agent, or is it a waste of time? The first book is still fresh, being only three months old. Thank you.
For agents that ask for the first so many pages....I've been told not to attach anything ever, so do I just...copy and paste into the email body?
This video could use some subtitles. I'm viewing a lot of these between short breaks in the office ❤
thanks for the video. one question i want to ask is that, while submitting manuscript, publisher also ask for detailed profile... so does it mean a resume that we make to get a job a or just a paragraph writing about myself.
A short paragraph about yourself. You can look for examples on the internet.
No resume.
How do you write a blurb for a book that has dual first person POVs?
How many words in a blurb?
Is the query blurb different to the elevator pitch? I seem to have learnt that the elevator pitch is much shorter.
Yes, the elevator pitch is definitely suppose to be short but catchy. It's named after creatives literally pitching their pieces while in an elevator with producers, so they're designed to go real quick!
There's a fair amount of overlap, and one often can use one as the other. The difference is that the elevator pitch answers the question "What's the gist of this story, who would want to buy and read this, and why?" whereas the blurb (as typically printed on the back of the book or the inside flap of the dust jacket if it's a hardcover) answers the question "What's the gist of this story, and why should *I* want to buy and read it?"
I am not sure how to pitch this in a short form. It is a monumental story changing history.
On July 17, 1996 at 11:15 p.m., I was working in overnight security dozing when my wife telephoned and asked if I had heard about the plane crash over Long Island. Immediately, I envisioned an enormous fiery explosion and told her all the people are dead. What happened can only be described as a psychic phenomena that was channeled to me that lasted on and off for three weeks.
My book proves that a bomb blew the plane up. The government did not want an international conflict. Khobar Towers had just occurred and turmoil raged in the Middle East so no way the government wanted to report that a bomb blew up the plane. Clinton was far ahead in the polling for the Presidential Election only months away and wanted no Mid-Eastern confrontation to affect his popularity.
The CIA made a documentary supporting the government's findings that a spark in the Center Wing Tank caused the plane to blow up which was totally fallacious which is disproved in my book.
Is this a good blurb?
What do you treasure? Is it your phone, a high score on a video game, what about in the future is it a good job, house, land, and/or a family? What would you want your children to treasure?
Imagine having that thing you treasure; how would you feel if someone came along and attempted to take that treasure from you. What would your reaction be? Mitzi discovered what she treasured when someone took her treasure from her. Did you ever get blamed by the school, your parents, a boss for something you didn't do? Then you understand Mitzi's frustration of when the people that should help don't. Where do should Mitzi turn for help when she is up against dishonest businessmen and lawyers. The people that should help don't. Maybe you are in that situation now; you don't know what your next step should be. You don't know where to go for help.
There is a place that has the answers. It may not be the answer you want but it will change your life in a way that you could never foresee.
Love to get some feedback. Thanks to everyone who replies.
It sounds to me like you're mashing up a blurb for a self-help book with another blurb for some kind of thriller and/or psychodrama about a gal named Mitzi. While it's not entirely unheard-of for a self-help book to include a series of vignettes about a character serving as a reader avatar to demonstrate how the reader should or shouldn't behave in various hypothetical situations, it's best not to go jumping back and forth between second-person and third-person narration in the same paragraph as you do here. To ensure a smooth transition, you should start a new paragraph when you start talking about Mitzi, e.g. your paragraph break should come after "What would your reaction be?" and then you should say something like "Follow along with Mitzi as she answers these questions."
If-on the other hand-what you're trying to sell here is actually a thriller and/or psychodrama, you should cut out the second-person narration altogether and go straight to talking about Mitzi and her problems in the first paragraph. You could start your blurb with an intriguing sentence like "Don't know what you've got 'til it's gone!" for the header text, and start your first paragraph with "Mitzi didn't know what she treasured most until she lost it," and then start talking about all those jerks who've wronged her and all those other jerks who wouldn't help her when she needed their help. In the next paragraph, you then say something like "There's a place that has the answers she seeks, though they may not be the answers she wants," and continue in that manner.
As it stands currently, the thoughts expressed in your blurb are too jumbled together (the aforementioned jumping back and forth between second-person and third-person narration) and redundant (you mention twice that the "people who should help" Mitzi aren't helping her; once should be sufficient). Also, your grammar needs some brushing up; e.g. you use a run-on sentence in your first paragraph (a single question which really should be presented as three separate questions). Moreover, every sentence that is a serious question should end-without exception-with a question mark; the only time to end a question with a period is when you're asking it sarcastically because you're being deliberately disrespectful to the one you're questioning, i.e. implicit in using a period instead of a question mark on the end of "Imagine having that thing you treasure; how would you feel if someone came along and attempted to take that treasure from you" is "...and why the hell would I care about your feelings, loser?"
Bottom line: sort out your thoughts, and then clarify to us whether you're advertising a self-help book or a thriller/psychodrama about a gal named Mitzi by writing your blurb *only* for the one kind of book; no mash-ups.
I would say that you could be a bit more specific about Mitzi and the setting she is in. You could also form the questions you're asking within that setting and description to get the reader to ask themselves those questions.
"Mitzi discovered what she treasured when someone took her treasure from her." effectively proposes that question to the reader, and I think trying to create so much intrigue actually makes it a little too vague. School, parents and boss also seems to be quite a broad group. If it's aimed at young adults maybe you don't need boss, and if it's aimed at adults, you don't need school.
I would try reading a selection of blurbs in the genre and age group you're writing for, and try to adapt the details of your story to that format. For me, this doesn't give me much of an idea of the stakes, time period or setting or any details about what Mitzi or what she is interested in.
If secrets are revealed she can’t stop the truth from coming out. The murder is thrown in, apropos of nothing. What did it have to do with the secrets that were revealed? I feel that if the blurb is confusing then 400 pages of the same would not appeal.
The blurb you chose as an example put me off. The first paragraph is just an adjective laden enumeration of off-the-rack characters made sound "special" by giving them strange backgrounds. If I see this book in a bookstore, I wouldn't even go past the first paragraph, so I really wonder why in the world you'd choose just that blurb.
Angel has had just about enough.
Her people have been caught between two hostile factions, desperately trying to mediate for centuries, with no hope of progress. In a fit of frustration, she summons the devil from another world of a by-gone era.
He is not pleased to have to babysit this trifle, testing her resolve time and again as she rides him across a sea of misery. Lives are lost to her word, and even victory leaves her broken and battered. Will she manage to plow through the tribulations, or will she sink under their weight?
Take a ride with her on this military adventure around the world.
Maybe because it was successfully published by Random House. She shared a blurb that worked, clearly.
@@keithmurphy3470
Yes, and we both stated that the book for us. I imagine it tickled the interests of the target audience, that being young women. As a grown man who can't tolerate having my intelligence insulted, nor putting up with liars, that blurb told me quite resoundingly, "Don't read this book!!!"
@@clintcarpentier2424 I think its perfectly reasonable that a blurb wouldn't speak to some people, but his commenter specifically said "I really wonder why in the world you'd choose just that blurb" - thats what my comment was in response to. She chose it because its a blurb that worked.
@@keithmurphy3470
I think the point of the post is where we are at an impasse. He said, "I really wonder why in the world you'd choose JUST that blurb." As in, it was the ONLY blurb she gave as an example. Here, try this...
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Even as a child, the Rowan was one of the strongest Talents ever born. Telepaths across the world had heard her mental distress calls when her family's home was suddenly destroyed... Years later, she became a Prime Talent, blessed with a special power which stretched across the stars. But without a family, friends - or love - the Rowan's power was not enough to bring her happiness...
Then a telepathic message came from a distant world facing an alien threat, a message sent by an unknown Talent named Jeff Raven.
Now - be it power, danger, or love - the Rowan is about to meet her match.
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Now I ask you. Which of the two is more enticing?
Example blurb is twice what is recommended for an agent query and has too many names that are easily forgotten. I want to hear about the mc, not her buds.
This blurb violates all the guidelines from every pro I've ever seen. And I lost interest by the second paragraph.
I can't imagine an agent devoting time to reading it. Maybe it works as a blurb for the back of the book, but not as a query.
The chosen example made the video hard to watch. I didn't like hearing it the first time, and then it was referenced again and again by necessity. The other thing is that the videos put out by a lot of literary agents discourage you from putting too many names in a blurb, yet the chosen example goes overboard with those. I can't remember more than three of the names (although I remember some character details), and I'm struggling to care about even one of the characters.
Way too many characters introduced in the first paragraph. Experienced agents wouldn't read any further.
The example blurb didn't do anything for me. The MC is a wretch. Clearly this book isn't for me.
Use cue cards or a teleprompter. The quick cuts are really off putting….for me, anyway….
Completely disagree with your sample blurb. I don't think that it's very good, and it is too vague. I don't get what it's going to be about at all. Too many characters are introduced, and then never mentioned again. The murder itself seems like an afterthought, and I don't see how anything's connected to anything. It does just about everything wrong that a blurb can do.
Also, that's an online store blurb. Why would you use an online store blurb as an example? Blurbs in query letters are supposed to reveal more about the story than online store blurbs. How do you not know this?
The example book blurb she uses is not a story I would read. Sounds real formulaic and not terribly interesting. Steeeerike!
I love the videos, but cringe every time you neglect the 't's in your words. It's not pronounced impor'ant, or bu'on or cer'ain. That change would help your videos sound more professional.
Thank you!