Tag: book descriptions

Are You Sure the Description of Your Book at Amazon Is Your Latest One?

Guest post
by Sylvia Engdahl

Did you know that people who view your Kindle book during your promotion may not be seeing its current description? If your book has been available for some time and you have revised its description in Author Central without also revising it on its KDP page, they’re not.

Although we were told in the past that the KDP description is not used if a description has ever been entered in Author Central — and some books about Kindle promotion still say this — Amazon has changed its system. The KDP description now overrides whatever was done in Author Central if any change at all is made through KDP, including price or categories. Continue reading “Are You Sure the Description of Your Book at Amazon Is Your Latest One?”

Book Description Basics

book descriptionThe number one problem we run into during the vetting process here at Indies Unlimited is a book’s description, also sometimes known as the book sales pitch or the book blurb. Too long, too short, too detailed, too vague, too too too, blah blah blah. What it comes down to is: many authors cannot write a book description on their own.

There’s nothing wrong with this. In most instances, it takes an outsider to point out what’s missing from (or not needed in) a book description. After all, an author has been married to the book for years. An author is most likely going to overlook points that a potential reader needs to know. It’s like explaining how to use a computer program that you know like the back of your hand. You’ll always skip over the basics or the foundation and get right to the good stuff. Meanwhile, your pupil is sitting there with a stupid look on his/her face, completely confused.

The basics for writing a good book description don’t change. Who, what, when, where, why, and how, and why do I want to read/buy this book? We’ve had plenty of articles about this already. We have an article that specifically explains how to write a book description. We’ve had a post on the most common book description issues. The Evil Mastermind even felt the need to break down book description epic failures into categories.

I’ve put together a list of the questions I most commonly ask after reading a book description that has confused me to the point of needing Dramamine. Reading these questions won’t replace the lessons in the articles linked to above. But hopefully, they will help prevent you from achieving the Epic Fail categories. Continue reading “Book Description Basics”

Book Description Epic Fail

One of the neat things about Indies Unlimited is that we get to become acquainted with the books of a whole lot of authors.

Not all those books make it onto the site. Sometimes this is because the subject matter is outside our wheelhouse. Other times, it is related to problems with the book. K.S. Brooks wrote a piece that covers a lot of the mistakes we see.

I don’t want to rehash her entire article, but I do want to focus on book descriptions. When I vet books, this is about as far as I ever have to go. Occasionally, I will read the preview of a book only because I can’t believe the book itself could possibly be as bad as the description. In many instances, the book is WAY better than the book description.

That’s too bad, because you really can’t expect a prospective buyer to take that extra step. Writing book descriptions is hard for authors. Kat wrote an article on how to write a book description. That article is chock full of good advice. Read it. Learn it. Live it.

I tend to organize information into categories. Here are a few of the error categories I have found in looking at book descriptions: Continue reading “Book Description Epic Fail”

Tagline Trauma

You have heard the expression, “It’s what’s inside that counts.” While I don’t disagree with the sentiment, allow me to add my own corollary: No one will see what’s on the inside if they can’t get past the outside.

Yes, you want the inside of the book to be captivating. The inside of the book is the actual book, after all. That’s where the writing part of being a writer mostly comes in.

Once you have typed “the end,” you are ready to get started. This is where it seems to become more difficult. Now that you’ve finnished writing, editing and polishing the actual book, you must now move on to packaging and marketing. Continue reading “Tagline Trauma”