What makes a good Amazon Description for books?
Thousands of writers struggle to get their books to the finish line. To the stage where it is ready to put it in front of the eyes of readers. They have their cover ready, their keywords ready (well, hopefully) and then they come to the description. How do you pull in a reader with a condensed version of your book's plot?
I admit this is something I struggle with each time I publish a book too. A way to condense my 60k plot book into a measly 100-200 word description. Uh, raise your hand if that one hurts your brain too.
So, I started poking around the good old internet in search of answers. How do all of these best-selling authors come up with these amazing descriptions that pull me into buying their book? Let's find out.
Try a Quote: This is a technique that I have only started using myself. I've seen this used by other authors, but to say that I've tested it and had success is yet to be determined. For example, if you publish through Amazon, you can simply place the text in bold ( Like this <b> The text you want in bold goes here. </b>) and this helps the quote stand out from the rest of your description. What kind of quotes am I referring to?
Review Quote: Placing a few grabbing lines of a good review for your book in bold at the top of your description can help assure readers they are in for a good buy. You want to avoid overloading the potential reader with too long of a quote or the poor person may never find out what the book is actually about.
Book Quote: Don't have any reviews yet? Why not choose a good quote from your book and let your work speak for itself. Who knows, this could be the hook a reader needs to make them click the buy now button.
Keywords, keywords, keywords: If you take anything away from this post, I hope that it is the emphasis on keywords. Most people nowadays use social media, like Twitter. Let's use Twitter as an example for this. To find something you are interested in on Twitter, you would search in tags (hashtags) in the search bar and it connects you with things related to your search. (Typically things on-trend come to the forefront.) This is exactly how keywords work.
I want you to remember these three things about Keywords.
Research: Before you start the description blurb for your book, I want to you research at least forty other books in your genre and similar categories. As you do this, I want you to pay attention to all of the keywords you come across. For Romance books, you may find the keywords Love, betrayal, relationships, marriage...you get the point. Create a list with at least 100 keywords so you have some variety. (Not only will this research help your description but it will come in handy later with advertisements!)
Put Together the Puzzle: Now that you have your handy list of Keywords, see how you can fit them into your description. This can sometimes be difficult, but it's workable. And, if done right, someone searches for those keywords and up pops your book!
Ask a Buddy: Ask someone who reads in the genre of your book to read your description and ask for their feedback. This person is going to be able to tell you if it grabs them or if it needs some tweaks.
Compare: Last but not least, compare your description to others in your genre. This may seem repetitive as you have already researched so many keywords from these same books, however, now it is time to test what you have completed. Do you see someone from another author's reader base ready to jump into one of your books with the description you created?
Creating the description blurb is a difficult part of the process but after a few times, it gets easier. Just remember to put yourself in the reader's shoes.