My grandfather used to say …
Good things come in threes.
I don’t know if it’s true, but I like the sound of it. And, if you think about it, some good things do come in threes.
The triple crown.
A turkey (in bowling).
The deathly hallows.
All kinds of stuff. And, when it comes to writing your blurbs, it’s no different. All you need to do is break it down into three things. And, fair warning here, you may have heard this before.
Your blurbs need to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Don’t roll your eyes just yet. First, let me try and tell you what I mean. When you take a 30,000-foot view of your book blurb, you want to see something that looks like a playground slide. If you don’t see where I’m going with this, don’t worry, I don’t either.
That slide – your blurb – has one purpose.
It needs to take your potential readers from clicking on your book thumbnail to pushing that purchase button. That’s it. I can’t break it down any further than that.
Slides function in a pretty simple way: you climb up the ladder, you sit down, and then you let gravity do the work. It’s not any different when we’re looking at your book blurb. But, in order to get it to work right, you have to build it properly.
You don’t want to put the steps on the slide, or you’re going to be in for a bumpy, painful ride. If you don’t believe me, just ask my 7-year-old. He was sore for a couple of days after that one … Somebody really should fire the guy that designed that slide. Your blurb isn’t any different.
You’re still designing it for somebody to take a ride on.
It’s just a different kind of ride.
But, before I get into that, we need to chat a little bit about why you need to learn how to write a blurb, and what it will do for the rest of your writing.
That is going to be in the next post.
Until then, good luck selling those books!