What is a Book Blurb?

A book’s blurb is the description of the book that entices readers to buy. Essentially, it tells the reader what your book is about without giving too much away. In paperback books, the blurb is located on the back cover. In ebooks, the blurb goes in the “product description” area, displayed front and center on your book’s product page.

Imagine a reader is looking for a new book on the shelves of Barnes & Noble. They pick up the book, probably enticed by the cover design, then turn the book over to read what’s on the back cover. When picking up a book for the first time, people read this description to understand more of what the book is about.

A well-written blurb contains the correct amount of information and intrigue to get the reader to purchase your book. An effective blurb gives the author an advantage for another book sale.

In other words, the blurb is a sales pitch to the potential reader.

Writing the blurb is a big deal, so some authors prefer to have someone write the blurb for them. I include blurb writing as standard in any editing package. I encourage authors to use the blurb on their paperback book’s back cover, Amazon ebook description, or in marketing materials (such as author website or social media pages).

How to Write a Book Blurb

There are a few guidelines to keep in mind when writing your book’s blurb:

• Write in present tense, even if your book is written in past tense. Readers should feel like the action is happening now, and present tense helps achieve this.
• Introduce your book’s main character and the problem he or she faces in the novel, but don’t give too much away!
• Blurbs should be around 150 words.

As every book is unique, every blurb should be original. I typically like to follow a formula:

• First paragraph: Introduce the main character and his or her regular life (what happens in your book’s beginning, before the problem/plot is revealed)
• Second paragraph: Detail the book’s main conflict. What’s the “problem” that your main character needs to solve?
• Third paragraph: Leave readers begging for more. I like to ask questions detailing what’s at stake or hint at impending doom for the characters.

Examples of Book Blurbs

Here are some examples of blurbs I have written:

Blurb for Love & Consequences by Aneca Ray

It’s crazy how far a woman will let a man push her in the name of love…

Sasha isn’t looking for love, but when she meets Ahmad, she finds herself immediately smitten. Ahmad is handsome, romantic, and perfect in many ways—plus, their chemistry in the bedroom is unmatched. But Sasha’s life crumbles around her when she discovers Ahmad has been cheating with a woman named Dedra.

Despite telling Ahmad that he has to make a choice between her and Dedra, Sasha is weak for the flesh and can’t resist her desires. As things escalate out of control, life-altering decisions are made—and Sasha becomes unquestionably aware of the consequences to being in a relationship with an uncommitted man.

When things reach a boiling point and Sasha lashes out at Dedra, there’s a very real chance that Sasha might go to jail if she’s caught for her crime. Can she handle the consequences of being burned from a dead-end love?

Blurb for Running on Maybe by Jackson McGarry

After helplessly watching two of her five children suffer and succumb to the Yellow Fever epidemic in 1913, Lillian Molyneaux has come apart. 

For over two years, her drinking has taken her to saloons, movie houses, the streets—and a sanitarium. Dark thoughts and menacing voices itemize her worthlessness as a woman, and distance her from her family. Her husband Scanlan is preoccupied, focused on war profiteering and the consequences of running for governor of Mississippi with a drunk wife. At every turn, he undermines Lillian’s sanity and threatens to have her locked up, if only to protect his own reputation.

Opelika, a beautiful Yalobusha parrot, suffers through her own trials in a cage in the Molyneaux home. Haunted by her past, Opelika spends her days getting drunk at Scanlan’s wishes and performing as a typical parrot.

When Lillian sees Martha Cutler—the so-called dead wife of Levi, Scanlan’s business partner—very much alive, Lillian is thrust onto the precipice of a cover-up that stretches far beyond her Mississippi home. And as Lillian and Opelika banish their demons and assert themselves, both come to find that the cages they live in—real and imagined—are a product of their own making.

Blurb for Clare Maynard’s Riyadh: The Final Two Weeks by Rosalina Sta. Maria

The year is 1980. Clare Maynard, an American nurse manager at the Royal Hospital in Riyadh, has seen it all. Here in Saudi Arabia, women are the property of their husbands, the consumption of alcohol is prohibited, and cultural customs forbid adultery, with a consequence of death by stoning.

Jill and Shawnee, two American nurses, come to work at the Royal Hospital under Clare’s direction. They come to know two women trapped by their circumstances: Marita, Clare’s friend who has been imprisoned by her rapist; and Aisha, an unmarried pregnant fourteen-year-old who is scheduled for stoning. Her death is the only way to clear her family’s shame. Jill and Shawnee are devastated by the rigid rules of Saudi society, but Clare insists that they must not intervene.

Yet when Marita’s rapist comes to collect her from prison and an altercation spirals out of control, the newfound friends are tied together in a crime that, if caught, would have far-reaching consequences. In a work of fiction that highlights the shocking differences between Western and Saudi Arabian cultures, Clare Maynard’s Riyadh: The Final Two Weeks is not to be missed.