Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Make the first sentence count. Keep the entire first paragraph short, this will encourage people to actually read it.
Preferably keep all blurb paragraphs short. The first is critical, but the others are important too. People tend to skip dense blocks of text.
Try to ensure that the blurb can be read quickly and easily. If necessary break it up to aid reading at skimming speed.
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Yeah, it's nice to have structure but I have seen great long blurbs and great super short blurbs. In fact, the best blurb I've ever seen is one sentence. Here it is:
Seventeen-year-old Camden Pike, a boy grieving for his girlfriend who was killed in a car accident, discovers a parallel world where she's still alive--but she isn't quite the same girl he remembers.
For Emily Hainsworth's
Through to You
35 words and it's got it all. But getting it all that quickly is freakishly hard.
Here's a long one that works.
Once he was a well-liked, well-paid young partner in a thriving Mississippi law firm. Then Patrick Lanigan stole ninety million dollars from his own firm--and ran for his life. For four years he evaded men who were rich and powerful, and who would stop at nothing to find him. Then, inevitably, on the edge of the Brazilian jungle, they finally tracked him down.
Now Patrick is coming home. And in the Mississippi city where it all began, an extraordinary trial is about to begin. As prosecutors circle like sharks, as Patrick's lawyer prepares his defense, former partners wait for their revenge, another story is about to emerge. Because Patrick Lanigan, the most reviled white-collar criminal of his time, knows something that no one else in the world knows. He knows the truth.
For John Grisham's
The Partner
I once had a very short blurb for my romantic suspense novel
The Find. Here it is:
What can a mother do when she has no money and a dangerously sick kid?
She can make a mistake.
In a moment of desperation, cleaning lady Phoebe Jackson tries to pawn the diamond-bejeweled Rolex she found in a mobster’s locker. Turns out the watch is a fake, but the mobster isn’t--and he’s on to her.
But then a very popular book review blogger told me it was too short.
So I came up with this:
She found a watch. A monster found a plaything.
Looking for love is the last thing on single mother Phoebe Jackson's mind. She's desperate to find a way to make enough money to help her sick child and will do anything to save her. Finding an expensive bejeweled watch is just the lucky break she needs, and her need to save her child overwhelms her ethics and she decides to take it.
Unbeknownst to her, the watch belongs to the mobster Michael "Fingertips" Contini. Within days Contini discovers she took the watch and confronts her, and soon Phoebe's lured into his world of wealth and power, and finds much much more than she was looking for...
Former cop Brent Greer, Phoebe's ex-husband's best friend, knows Contini's history all too well and knows that Phoebe is blind to how much danger she's really in. Her problems may be none of his business, but he can't stand by and watch her fall in deeper. Extricating her from the vicious gangster is harder every day she spends with him—yet if Brent can't convince Phoebe to get out, a deadly end can't be far off.
I still don't know if it was a good idea to switch. The short one just has some magic. As does Catlady's version for
Saving Baby.