How to Write a Book Description in Three Steps
Ground Rules
No One Cares
The sad thing a book editor, or any writer, has to admit to themselves from the outset is that no one — or at least the vast majority of people — will read closely the words they tinker and obsess over. Most readers, myself included, glace at the back of a book or the online page and skim the information. They read 3-4 sentences total and maybe absorb 1-2. So, my first piece of advice to any writer whether you are writing an important email, a cover letter, a college application, a query letter to an agent, or a book description, is to let go of the idea that it has to be as comprehensive or intense as you feel it needs to be. A book description, like any other piece of causal persuasive writing, does not have bear your soul, it just has to hook someone in for the bigger ideas.
Everything Matters
Precisely because no one cares, everything you put into any form of short introductory communication matters. Like an elevator pitch or first impression, it is silly that people make serious, life-altering judgements on short communications, but nonetheless true that they’re crucial. Every day, I watch as fragments of sentences become talking points or in some cases part of a book review (when a reviewer needs to summarize the book’s plot, guess where they go first). An editor may write a masterpiece of jacket copy only for their book to become “that nature book” or “that one about an Irish family.” Ideas are hard to encapsulate, books and people are hard to summarize, so the words you supply as the writer will be the ones people reach for when they try to tell someone else about it. Therefore, everything you write matters, and everything is equally up for misinterpretation. If you write in a description that part of the novel takes place in space, get ready for the reader to only take away “book about space,” even if in context you made it clear that there was only one scene set in space.
Writing is all about distillation—you may have spent hours, day, or in the case of a novel, years, laboring over something, but in communicating why you or your work is important to someone, you have to let go the idea that you can communicate the whole thing. Then you have to ensnare the reader with the most intriguing parts and make sure everything counts.
1.Pick an angle
The most important aspect of writing copy is picking an approach, a way in. While it’s important to ditch complexity sometimes for the sake of overall effect (see ground rule #1: “No One Cares”), honesty also tends to ring the truest and be the strongest guiding light. That’s why I suggest always find the one, most special thing to lead with (this should be somewhat obvious after reading a 300+ page book). For a book of nonfiction this is often, simply, the thesis of the book or the unique offering to the reader. There is probably some history book out there that whose description is headlined by “the first definitive biography on Abe Lincoln’s toddler years” or “lose weight permanently with these 42 fool-proof granola recipes.” Easy, right?
However, as you stretch from the more informational type of offering to a more creative one, “the most special thing” takes on more variety to match that creativity—otherwise every novel’s descriptive copy would just be headlined by “this novel will change your life!”. It becomes a fine balance between specificity and wide appeal. This is the whole practice of copywriting--introducing enough of the true, unique elements so that a description has the flavor, the tone, the personality of the thing being described, while never getting into the nitty-gritty enough to be tedious and have readers tune out.
In deciding how to start a description there are a few fine options to select from:
Place: If you’re writing a description of a historical, novel the year and the location is often the most crucial way to start. Tudor England, 1382 Japan, Seattle in the 1970s— these all constitute the most important orientation for a reader from where all the other details of the description will naturally follow. But this is also the case with other types of books—small town, New York City, planet Mars. In just a few words a writer can powerfully direct the reader using the huge expectations set by a place.
Premise: Many novels are built on an idea. A stranger shows up on a doorstep; a child goes missing; a scientist has discovered how to jump backwards in time. Sometimes the big idea really is what everything else feeds from— “what if humans could morph into animals,” shout out Animorphs and whoever their cover designers were. However, this is always a risky choice in copywriting, because this choice can be the most alienating, vague way of opening copy if the premise isn’t unique (i.e., “we’ve seen a lot of children go missing, what makes this one so special?”).
Character: Oftentimes, the most compelling way to start is with a human element. While it might be natural to think something so specific could dissuade lots of readers, more often this specificity is intriguing. It’s the most natural method we have for getting the reader to ask “why?”. Even if it’s a relatively familiar idea — “Sadie woke up on her 15th birthday knowing she had a brain tumor” — we will come away wanting to learn more about the person if some interesting qualities or circumstances are dangled.
Unique Opener: The highest level of copywriting is to come up with a new way in that’s more creative than any of these tried-and-true methods. A piece of imagery, a question, a joke. This is not advised, but the true artists in the book editing world can do it. Just look at three random massive bestsellers great opening copy lines, and you’ll see why trying to go more creative than the three methods above is risky:
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store (Place): “In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well.”
Lessons in Chemistry (Character): “Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman.”
The Midnight Library (Premise): “Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality.”
2. Two Sweeping Statements. Or, Repeat Your Thesis. Or, “Zoom Out.”
This comes out of high school English class 101, but it’s a fairly crucial piece of advice, which is that you get only two opportunities to make grand sweeping statements when writing a description: the beginning and the end. That’s it. Really go for it in these places, with the deepest, most sincere statement you can muster, zoom out and give a 10,000-foot perspective, but don’t ever get hifalutin or philosophical outside of those two sentences.
In book description terms this means leading with what the book sets out to do, “An epic about one Nebraskan family who through seven generations must bear the burden of saving the United States from a secret alien threat” and closing with a sentence that summarizes what a reader will take away when they finish the book: “a heartrending family story for the ages that shows us the breadth of loyalty and love that is, sometimes, even larger than the universe.”
3. No Plot, All Setup
In between the first and last sentences, everything about a description should be stripped of plot, unless it serves as setup. The goal of a description is to tell the reader what animates the book, not what happens. Audrey’s mother stealing her gold necklace may be a pivotal moment in the novel, but in copy this should become something like “Audrey’s mother commits an act of betrayal her daughter can never forgive…” I often see writers in query letters describe their books and write synopses, not descriptions. For the vast majority, any short form of summary like a book description should have rounded edges and play the hits.
Finally…
As always read and borrow the best ideas from elsewhere, but never copy. Happy copywriting!