Write the blurb and outline your book

Task One: Write at least three blurbs

Write at least three blurbs for your book: 200 words, 50 words, and 25 words. (See the sample blurbs in this chapter.)

Task Two: Collect sample blurbs

Blurbs sell books. Everyone from the publisher who initially buys the proposal, to the book store owner who stocks your book will decide whether they’re interested in your book based on the blurb alone.

Become a connoisseur of blurbs. Start your own blurb collection. Each time you see a blurb which you think is effective, copy it, and put it into your Blurb File.


Writing the blurb

The "blurb" is the back cover material for your book --- the selling points which will get people to buy the book. If you write the blurb before you write an outline, you're guaranteed not to wander off the track as you write your book.

I can’t emphasize the importance of your blurb enough. If you've been thinking of skipping this section, please don't. Here are some reasons to write your blurb first:

it keeps you focused on the theme of your book;
it makes writing the outline easier;
it makes selling your proposal easier;
it will assure your agent and editor that you know what you're doing, and they'll feel comfortable working with you and handing over the advance;
when you've sold the book, and the time comes to write it, you'll have an easier time because you can keep the blurb at the forefront of your mind.

Your blurb helps your agent and editor to get a contract for you

Your blurb is the "sales story" for your book. If your agent becomes enthusiastic about your book, she'll become enthusiastic on the basis of your blurb. She'll use the blurb as her sales pitch to other people. For example, when she talks to an editor at a publishing house who may be interested in your book, she'll start with your blurb. The conversation will stop there if the editor doesn’t see the book's potential. Let's say that the editor likes the blurb enough to look at the proposal. If she's still keen, it's her turn to sell your book, on the basis of the blurb, to the other people in the publishing company. She'll need to convince Sales and Marketing that they can sell your book. If they're not keen, you won’t get an offer.

When you've written your book, your publisher will try to sell your book to book distributors, and later to booksellers, all on the basis of the blurb that you started out with. So the time that you spend working on the blurb is not wasted, it's the most important part of your book. Without a good blurb, your book will not come into existence.

Having said all that, it's also important that you don't obsess over your blurb. Everything you write can be fixed, so focus on getting your blurb written, in various lengths, rather than striving to make your blurb perfect. Your blurb may well go through many incarnations: you'll make changes, your agent may want changes, and your editors will definitely want changes.

Sample blurbs

Here are two sample blurbs.

The first is from my book LifeTime: Better Time Management in 21 Days, published by Prentice Hall in 1997. I wrote this blurb while I was working to gather material for the book. It took me around ten minutes to write. You'll often find that as you're starting to work on book, your blurb will come to you as a flash of inspiration. If it doesn’t, don’t worry about it, just follow the process outlined below.

The second is from my book Making The Internet Work For Your Business which was published by Allen & Unwin in 1998. I didn't write this blurb until the book was complete, and the publisher was sending a brief to the cover designer. This blurb took me a long time to write. I also had a lot of trouble writing the book, and I think that if I'd written the blurb before I started, I would have had a much easier time with the book, and would have enjoyed writing it more.




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