Lesson I: Your Book Page
Your book description is important because it may be the last thing people read before they decide to buy your book. It’s almost certainly the last thing they read if they get to your page and decide not to buy. But the description is just one thing you can put on your book page, and if you can get all of them working together, it can really help seal the deal.
The Number One Thing Authors Get Wrong With Their Book Page
It mostly shows up in the description, but the concept applies to everything on the page. When people write their description, they think they should introduce the characters and tell enough of the story to get people intrigued, but not so much that they spoil it. They think this because it is what most everybody does. And most everybody is right to do it. The difference is in intent, and it is everything.
The purpose of the description — and everything that comes before, after, and with it — is to sell the book.
Usually, what sells the book is exactly what I described above, which we’ll be covering in Lesson 2: The Basic Description. But if it isn’t, then do something else. Always understand that this is all promotional material designed to sell. Aim your description at the people who might buy your books, not at your own taste. If you are a person who only buys books that are recommended by your friends, than whether the description looks good to you or not means almost nothing. You have to put aside your personal tastes and what you think suits the book best and create a book page that converts. This is hard for authors, because we absolutely know our books better than anyone else. When a description that we are certain fits the book perfectly doesn’t move any copies, we can have trouble moving on from it.
Don’t stick with a description that doesn’t sell books. Find and use one that does, even if you hate it.
The Book Page
We’re going to look at an Amazon book page, but most of these elements will be present wherever you’re selling your books, and you should be able to apply the concepts there.
The cover and description, as shown in Figure 1, are the most important part of getting someone to buy your book. The cover must still look good at this bigger size. The book description must fit the genre and promise a good read. There is also one small detail here that may be even more important than either of those two things: the little blue number that tells you how many ratings the book has. Do everything you can to get your readers/friends/family members/strangers on the street to rate your book. No matter how much you discount it, people don’t like to take chances on books by authors they don’t know. The greatest thing you can do to sell your book is to get a bunch of reviews of it. Get enough, and the viewer no longer considers it an unknown; in their mind, the reading public has spoken and they liked it, so it’s probably okay to buy it if they like the description.
But if you don’t have the reviews, than the description and everything else you can add goes up even more in value. Now you have to convince someone to buy something they know little about. So give them as much information as you can without spoiling the whole thing. You will want to signal genre like the cover does. Imply tropes you know the reader will like (or state them outright if it is romance or erotica). Use priming words in your ad copy rather than a simple “Buy now!” Do this in all your elements.
Read Sample
The sample is the other super-important piece of text on this page. This gives the potential buyer a look at the actual product. They must like it. That’s another reason why the beginning of your book must start with a bang or a hook. It has to give the person a reason to want to keep reading. A need to keep reading. If they come away from the sample with a burning desire to find out more about the characters and their dilemmas, then you have almost certainly sold a book.
The Other Elements
So far, everything that shows up was either entered by you when you uploaded the book (Cover, Title, Subtitle, Author, Series, Description) or was created automatically (Sample, Ratings). To enter the other stuff (on Amazon, at least) you need to go to Amazon Author Central. Here you can edit your book descriptions as well as add/edit all the other elements that can enhance your page.
You have a bunch of options. You can add reviews, about the author, and a message from the author. You can add text from the back cover and inside the front flap. This text doesn’t have to actually be on the back cover or inside the front flap. It shows on the Kindle page, so you might not even have to be selling a paperback to add these. They are just text boxes for you to add extra things that might help sell your book.
A+ Content
The final piece (in Amazon, at least) is what they call A+ content. It’s a widget area with some simple widgets for pics and text combinations. To put that up, you have to go to your KDP Marketing page, by going to your KDP account and clicking on marketing in the top menu. From there scroll down to A+ Content, pick a marketplace, and hit “Manage A+ Content.” From there you can pick and choose the elements you want to add to the page and add your own images to them.
Below, you can see the graphic elements I made for Chris’s and my book, A Wolf In My Beard. Note how the graphics are signaling fantasy comedy. More serious depictions of the characters would give people the wrong idea about the book. And indie publishing is all about promising the reader something and delivering on it. That’s what makes for satisfied readers who read through an entire series and clamor for the next.
So when you think about your description, think about it as a piece of all this promotional material you can put on your book’s page.
Readings/Viewings:
- Read the “Nailing the First Line” section from the essential skills article Novel Writing: The First Draft. Good concepts to make sure your “Read Sample” is helping sell the book.
- Watch this video on Amazon reviews. Getting reviews without getting banned.
Protected: Book Descriptions — Free