A cover might bring the reader in, but it’s the description that seals the deal. So, how do you write a description that turns browsers to buyers?
Discoverability vs. Conversion
A good description both makes your book easier to find through good use of keywords and search terms as well as “conversion” — getting someone to buy the book. When writing descriptions, I lean far more toward conversion over discoverability, because if you get eyes on the your book that don’t buy, you’ve wasted ad money and are telling the algorithm that your book doesn’t sell. Booksellers give higher priority in searches to books that sell. Teach the algorithm that your title converts, and it will work to get it in front of more eyes.
What You Like vs. What Sells
Description writing is not like writing a book. Writers often “write what they want to read.” Be cautious of this as a description writer. If you are not a good book buyer, then don’t write a description that appeals to you; write one that appeals to people who actually buy books.
I write mostly fantasy. I read a lot of fantasy — but almost exclusively fantasy that has been recommended to me from trusted readers. I had to learn that a description I think is awesome is almost useless as a sales tool. Instead, I learned to write descriptions that would convert with people shopping for books online.
Know Your Genre
Read the descriptions for the bestsellers in your genre, especially the independent books. Note how they signal the genre. How they tell a story without giving away the ending. How they give you characters to care for. Look for the genre markers they give. You will be trying to emulate this in your description.
Signal Your Genre
You need to assure the description reader that this is a book they are interested in. Signaling genre is one of the ways to do that. You don’t need to come right out and say what the genre is —that can be done, but it’s difficult to maintain a good rhythm in your description while doing so. Instead, use these two techniques:
1. Use genre specific words:
- prince, magic, kingdom — fantasy
- fated, werewolf, mate — paranormal romance
- quaint, cozy — cozy mystery
- violent, fast, charged — thriller
As you can see, some words are very specific, others not so much. But all help signal what genre the book is. And not only do you want to use words that signal the genre, you want to avoid words that might signal a different genre.
2. Write in the Genre Style
Write the description in the style of the genre. If it’s a thriller, make sure there’s a ticking clock, and the prose is taught and spare. Include some description in your secondary-world epic fantasy description. Be florid for your regency romance, funny for your comedy, comfortable for your cozies — you get the idea.
It’s all a bit of a dance as you try to signal genre without sliding into cliché, but you will improve with practice. I’ve included exercises at the end of this piece to help you get better.
Include a Call to Action
Anyone in advertising will tell you that if you don’t include a call to action, don’t bother running an ad. A description is an ad for your book, so tell people what to do when they’re done reading it. Use priming words: Experience the saga. Dive in to the story. Discover what happens next. A good call to action with some good priming words or phrases can make the difference between whether you gain a reader or not.
The Parts of a Description
Let’s look at the specific construction of a description. Like most things in the writing world, it is far more guideline than rulebook, and you will likely see many descriptions of successful books that don’t share this specific blueprint. But it is an excellent place to start.
1. The Hook/Tagline
The hook is one or two sentences only. It needs to be clever and intriguing, and give away just enough information for the reader to continue on to the meat of the description. Let’s look at the hook for John Scalzi’s latest, Starter Villain. Scalzi is an award-winning writer who started out in self-publishing and transitioned to a successful trad career.
Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.
This tagline does two things: signals the genre (superhero) and gives a little intrigue to keep the reader going.
The first sentence, by using the word supervillain, tells the reader this is a superhero book. The second gives the reader a little mystery to solve. Who is running the place?
You will learn the importance of keywords when learning about SEO for your titles, but the hook is not the place to stuff keywords into. In fact, save your keyword stuffing for the after description note (#5). Everything else is for converting.
2. The Main Character
How many main characters you mention in your description is usually more genre dependent than POV dependent. For instance, complex thrillers often have multiple POVs, but you should probably only mention the main one in the description. In a romance, you will start with the POV character and move to the love interest. In a big epic fantasy, you may talk more about societies than individuals. Look at the description for the successful books in your genre to see who they’re highlighting.
In most cases, it’s important to highlight a character right off the beat. It gives the description reader a reason to care about what’s coming next.
Continuing on with Scalzi’s Starter Villain description, the next line after the hook is:
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast.
We immediately have a character to care about, as most of us can relate to someone who is stuck in their life.
A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.
And now, with two sentences, we know about the MC’s situation and the main problem he’s facing. You want to get through this part as quickly as possible. Because, no matter how relatable the protagonist is, readers want a story. Get to the story fast so you don’t lose the reader.
3. The Story
Now, you tell the story of the book. Notice that I didn’t say to summarize the book. You need to do a bit of that, but you must utilize your storytelling skills. And you mustn’t tell the whole thing! Tease, tantalize, tell the reader about the main problem the character faces, walk the plot a little bit forward for them, but then leave them hanging. They need to buy the book to find out what happens. So, make them care what happens. Here’s Scalzi’s story for Starter Villain:
Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.
But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.
It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyperintelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
Immediately, we get the thing that changes Charlie’s humdrum life completely. This is the book’s hook, the inciting incident, the thing that starts the plot rolling. Is this a bit of a spoiler? Yes, but people are accustomed to this. You can’t just say, “Here’s humdrum Charlie. But trust me, something really strange is going to happen.” You have to give them something.
Next, a short paragraph giving us an overview of what the plot is going to be. It’s clear enough to be interesting, but vague enough to not give the whole story away.
The last paragraph is a classic “It’s up to the protag” line, a common way to wind up a description . But it’s common because it works. Note the words that signal (if you haven’t figured it out yet) that this is a comedy book as well as superhero.
4. The Call to Action
Instead of a CTA, Scalzi gives us this:
In a dog-eat-dog world...be a cat.
A clever, memorable, ending tagline can be used in place of a call to action. Some people may say it’s even better than a CTA. Either way, end with a zinger or a good instruction to buy. Again, it’s better to use priming words like discover or dive into or whatever is appropriate for your book instead of “Buy now!”
5. After Description Notes
After steps 1 through 4, you should have a good, converting description. However, there is still more that can be done. After the main description, I like to put in my best author recommendations, keyword sentences, series notes (if it’s a series book), anything that you feel needs to be in the description of your book but would interrupt the flow of a good description to include earlier.
Is It the Description’s Fault?
Sometimes a book doesn’t sell. There are usually one of two reasons for this: either no one knows about it, or it isn’t converting. If your ads don’t have a good click-thru rate, you may want to try changing your ads first. But if people are clicking but not buying, it’s probably your description. Since most ads feature the book’s cover, it’s not the cover that’s the problem.
When this happens, examine your description. Is it doing the things it needs to do: establish a character, make us care about them, tease the story, and end with a CTA or a clever bon motte? If you believe it is doing all this, then it might be targeted toward the wrong people.
For example, the first book in my Bad Company series has three POV characters. In my first description, I highlighted all three of them. But it’s mostly political thriller readers that are interested in an ensemble cast, and this is a horror thriller. Next, I decided to highlight my female protagonist, as I was excited to feature a strong woman lead in a thriller. But turns out, most of my readers were male. When I finally wrote a description that featured my main male protagonist, the sales followed.
You need to not only write a good description, it needs to be a good description for the readers who will buy the book.
Exercises
1. Bad Book Headlines
This is a simple exercise to broaden your view of what a tagline can look like. It has no practical use, but is a fun exercise to take some of anxiety out of description writing. It involves breaking a book or movie down to its component parts and thinking of the weirdest way of describing it. Some notable examples:
“Thief steals ring. Makes relative destroy evidence.” — Lord of the Rings
“Newly radicalized youth murders thousands.” — Star Wars
See if you can write a terrible headline to describe some other famous works. Then do it to the book you’re describing.
2. Tagline a Famous Work
Now, instead of a bad headline for a famous work, try to write the tagline for a famous work. How would you blurb Carrie? Or Jaws?
3. Do a full description for a book you love.
Write a description for a popular book. How does your description compare to the one the publisher uses? If the book wasn’t famous, how might the description change and would it be close to yours? There is no wrong answer to these questions, but thinking about them will help you when you finally write a description for your own book.