I struggle with writing the back of the book blurb for my novels. Mainly because I rarely read them myself since so many spoil the book. They often try to make you read the book by disclosing the most exciting part of the story, even if that part doesn’t happen until half way through the novel.
I’ve even seen book blurbs that describe what happens in book two of a series, spoiling not just one story, but two.
I once wrote a meta-book blurb:
Imagine a world in which readers determine what novel to read based on reading the first two paragraphs rather than a spell-binding summary of the entire novel where readers are fooled into expecting a different type of story than what is presented. So, open the novel, or download a free sample, just don’t pay attention to what’s on the back of the book.
When Create Space offered a free copy of one’s novel to all NaNoWriMo winners the first year I joined, I put on the back cover, “Read me!” I often feel that is still all that should be needed. The advice to not judge a book by its cover is something I follow.
But most people expect the back of the book to entice them to read the story. I refuse to cover more than what happens in the first three chapters. Any hints about future issues have to be vague. It can be difficult not to get bogged down in the introduction of characters, but that doesn’t belong in a book blurb either.
Getting feedback on book blurbs from critique circle can be difficult. It’s difficult to critique a book blurb unless one has read the entire book. But it takes months and months to read a novel on critiquecircle.com since a chapter is posted a week. You can post more, but then people may not read both chapters and it costs you more credits. So, most people post a chapter a week. By the time someone finishes a novel, few readers want to comment about what might entice them to read it. Critiquing a blurb when you haven’t read the book is also difficult. How do you know if what the author has highlighted is important enough in the novel for the reader to feel satisfied?
I value another perspective on this, so I posted the beginning chapters, and then the blurb. I did get good comments. Although I may have stressed the tolerance of my fellow critiquers since I did this for all four books in my Edinburgh series.
I got useful comments on how to make the book blurbs more interesting, and another look at the beginning of each book, which can be helpful, especially since I recommend that people start reading to determine if they like a novel. Means the opening needs to be strong, but that’s a good idea anyway.