Today’s tour stop was supposed to be C.J. Redwine’s blog, but she’s having a medical emergency. Please keep her in your prayers. Gallbladder surgery is nothing to sneeze at. C.J. hope you feel better soon!!! I will let y’all know when it’s up.
Meanwhile, I feel it imperative to wish you all a Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth Be With You.
“Stop it. My hands are dirty.”
“My hands are dirty too. What are you afraid of?”
“Afraid?”
“You’re trembling.”
“I’m not trembling.”
“You like me because I’m a scoundrel. There aren’t enough scoundrels in your life.”
“I happen to like nice men.”
“I’m nice men.”
“No, you’re not. You’re…”
Smoochy!
Proof that I have seen the original trilogy too many times? Maybe.
On to more writing related things. So part of publishing something yourself that I have noticed many people neglect is the quality of the blurb. You know, the short description that’s supposed to entice the reader to BUY YOUR BOOK. When I started out, I thought I had a pretty good one. I was happy with it.
Smashwords has a 400 character limit. CHARACTER, not word. Do you have any idea how SHORT 400 characters is? That’s 3 Tweets. I’ve been through several incarnations trying to come up with a good one and finally settled on this:
Banished from their world with his memory wiped, Cade Shepherd doesn’t remember his life as Gage Dempsey, nor the woman he nearly died for. But when Embry Hollister’s father is kidnapped by military scientists, the only one she can turn to is the love from her past. Will Gage remember the Shadow Walker skills he learned from her father? If they survive, will Embry be able to walk away again?
Not as descriptive as I’d like, but it hits the high points and fits the character limit. It’s light years better than some of the ones I’ve read over on Smashwords. Since I am, for now, doing the indie thing, I’ve been trolling through their selections trying to be supportive. Mostly I see a lot of really poorly constructed blurbs that don’t entice me in the least to part with my money.
Seriously, one of them is just “What if the neighborhood vigilante was a werewolf?” That is not a blurb. That’s the “what if” question that probably spawned the story. It doesn’t tell me anything about what you want me to read. Fail.
And if you have typos or grammatical errors in your BLURB, what does that say about the work you’re trying to advertise? Again. Fail.
A good blurb should say something about the work, usually in a statement that gives the problem, the goal, and the conflict. It’s great if you can fit motivation in there too. There should be some implied (or stated) question that the reader wants answered enough to buy your book. Take mine for example:
[Banished from their world with his memory wiped, Cade Shepherd doesn’t remember his life as Gage Dempsey, nor the woman he nearly died for. But when Embry Hollister’s father is kidnapped by military scientists, the only one she can turn to is the love from her past.] Problem and Goal [Will Gage remember the Shadow Walker skills he learned from her father? If they survive, will Embry be able to walk away again?] Question and Conflict
I hope like heck that you want to know the answer to that question. Anyway put some time and effort into your blurb and I guarantee you will see a corresponding increase in sales.