Covers and Blurbs

A quick blog on how I think of my covers and my product descriptions. Hopefully this might change the way you view yours, and help you sell more books. If not, you’re entitled to a full refund for my advice.

Let’s start with covers.

A cover is a visual identification of your product’s genre, and should be both as eye catching as possible, as well as consistent with other bestsellers in your space. It also needs to be professional. Gone are the days where you could screw around with photoshop and hope for a win. That’s so 2012. Don’t kid yourself – the market has never been more competitive, and if you hamstring your product with an amateurish or clunky cover, you’re going to suck exhaust.

The cover is also extremely important in your ads, as in Amazon ads it’s basically got to sell the reader sufficiently so they’ll click on the ad to see the product page. The worse the cover, the fewer conversions from impressions to clicks. That simple.

Which segues to blurbs.

Your product description ain’t what you think it is. It’s not a synopsis of the story, or a way to introduce characters or story arcs.

So what is it?

It’s ad copy, plain and simple. Words that will convince the reader that they need to buy the book. The fewer words used to achieve that, the better the copy.

Ads can get the reader to your product page, but the blurb intrigues them enough to where they need to buy the book in order to satisfy their curiosity. The purpose of the blurb is to sell the book. Nothing else.

An awesome blurb will sell more books, and can be measured in ad effectiveness, specifically in cost per click related to conversion into a sale. The better the blurb, the more clicks will convert into a purchase. The worse the blurb, the less they will convert.

I use Bestsellerblurb.com for the first books in my series, and have them working on the later books. The results have been stellar so far – marginal ad campaigns have turned strongly positive after changing the blurb, so this isn’t theory.

That’s all I have time for today. Hope it helps.

If not, I recommend tequila.