In my opinion, which I'm fairly certain makes sense, the blurb (summary, Amazon description, back of the book, and all of its many powerful names) should fit the tone of the book it's describing. To illustrate this point, I've got three examples of blurbs I've written fro fellow authors and what makes them stand out. Each book is available on Amazon and I'm sure the authors would love for you to read them. They're also all fantastic. I know, I had to read them for this next part. 😁
Serious books, like Old School by Aurelio Rico Lopez III, benefit from outlining the stakes as well as mirroring the thoughts or emotions of the main character. Clarence is pretty close to being properly elderly, and he's weary of the world and his place in it. He just wants to get on with life and keep his head down. The blurb reflects that fact in the way it describes how he must confront the events laid out before him.
"Getting drunk and stumbling home have become commonplace for Clarence. He lives his life one day to the next, drinking and doing his best to avoid the attention of Anton, a dangerous man whom Clarence owes a significant amount of money. It’s an unfortunate situation for a man of his age, but he’s making the best of it.
But when he intervenes on behalf of his downstairs neighbor, Clarence finds himself in the one place he’s been trying desperately to avoid. Relying on the skills from his old life, Clarence finds himself embroiled in close quarters urban conflict with pimps and thugs. When his neighbor’s child is kidnapped by her pimp’s boss, Clarence must find a way to negotiate with the one man he’s been trying to avoid, Anton, the local crime lord himself. It will take everything he’s got to make it through the gauntlet, all for the sake of a boy he barely knows."
Short and sweet. You're given the character, a glimpse of his life, and a dose of what the main conflict will be. I like these blurbs because they are simple and effective. They lay out everything you need to know about the story you're getting without revealing the best parts. And, as previously mentioned, its writing gives insight into the tone of the story, through the lens of its chief protagonist.
Many books, however, aren't as serious. The beauty of books is that they can take many forms. This next tale, while certainly falling into the category of horror for many of us on a personal level, is also disgusting, hilarious, and irreverent in the extreme. For Chris Miller's Flushed, I decided that being super serious was out of the question for the summary. Writing something that didn't illustrate the comical absurdity within its pages would be disingenuous and likely birth a series of negative reviews for the wrong reasons (there's always someone, you know?).
"You’ve had a bad day before. We all have.
But Marty is in a whole other level of shit.
Literally.
Following a drunken night of sex with the office secretary, Marty’s guts are rebelling after his personal hangover remedy, nachos with jalapenos and hot sauce.
Marty has to go. And he’s got to get across the office to do so. Standing in his way are Nikki, the secretary from the night prior, Brad, the vape enthusiast douche, and possibly even his boss. The office door is always open, after all.
Join Marty on his trek, like a vulgar Lord of the Rings. The distance may be shorter, but the stakes are just as high."
Now, was it a little crazy to compare a 21-page hungover rush to the toilet to one of the greatest sagas of all time? Probably. But it imparts a touch of the aforementioned absurdity that tells the reader "This story is not meant to be taken too seriously." High stakes don't always mean saving the world. And I'd venture to say that Marty sure believes his stakes to be important.
Finally, every now and then, I'll get a real challenge. This next book (and thus its blurb) is just such an example. Short story collections are a tricky beast. Each story is just long enough that, if you aren't careful, you could give the whole thing away in a matter of twenty words or so. In cases like this, I find a good way to write a blurb is to find somewhere different to focus.
With Fallen Muse by Sarah Scutt, I had to take a large number of disparate stories and write a blurb for them all. In order to do so, I had to read through them each a few times until something sprang to mind. That element that eventually ambushed me was the theme, the inherent thread connecting all the stories.
"The Muse has fallen.
Hoarders. Buskers. Farm girls. Landscapers.
Though seemingly unrelated, they all share one thing in common. The world is a strange place.
Dark and stormy nights meet the bright light of day, from trailer parks to thrift stores. Whether they're confronting a drunk driver or an angry mother, everyone runs afoul of the world's weirdness at some point. Even the supernatural lurks only a breath away from everyday mundane life.
Join in the odd, meandering journey as Sarah Scutt takes you from one eerie circumstance to the next, along a twisted trail, as though your feet are being guided by a fallen muse."
The theme? That thread I mentioned? The world is a strange place. It's something I think we all understand, something we have all experienced at some point. Here, it binds these tales together, and also presents them as relatable to the reader, even if they've never experienced a situation like any presented within the book. (And I really hope they haven't, because damn.) I loved the book for its many narratives, and I loved writing the blurb for the challenge of finding a way to include the stories without revealing too much about them.
Blurbs (summaries, etc.) can be difficult. After all, you just finished writing the whole damn book. Now you're expected to take your precious word baby and cram it into a teeny, tiny box without ruining it so people can take a brief look at it and say, "Yeah, I think I'll try this one." (Did I just make a cannibalism metaphor? Oops.) I know the frustration of it, but it's also a process I enjoy (And now that metaphor has come back to bite me. Damn, there it is again).
So, if you hate writing blurbs and are willing to spend $15 to avoid doing so, I'm your happy copilot and will work with you to make sure it's just what you want to attract your readers. And I might also end up working up some free advertising like these three lovely authors got so I could make my blog not look so desolate. 😉
