Self Publishing Advisor

If you want to sell your book online, you must have a strong book description.

When you make self-publishing a business, you’re in charge of all the components for hooking in buyers: marketing, publicity, keywords, metadata . . . and even a stellar book cover.

Even then, you need your book’s product page to describe what your book is about and persuade people to buy. Often called online descriptive copy in marketing parlance, your book’s online copy is like the description on a physical book’s back cover.

However, online copy does a lot more lifting, as, unlike an in-person bookstore, the buyer can’t pick up a tangible object. On the internet, what you have are many pixels and a whole bunch of words.

It’s a daunting task to write copy that sells your book, especially if you aren’t used to putting your work out there. Still, I have some advice on how to craft your book’s store pages so that you can do good business and give justice to your book.

It’s All about Reciprocity

If you feel skeevy about selling your book, I have some words of reassurance. As long as you focus on reciprocity, you will maintain your integrity as an author and a seller.

As a self-published author, you want people to buy and read your book. As a reader, your buyers want to find a book they’ll enjoy. Therefore, it’s in both of your interests to make the sell on a book your reader wants.

To this end, look at your book and think: what do you love most about your writing? What do you think and hope readers will enjoy when reading? Finally, what are some comps (short for comparable titles) that you can mention in your description that will guide your readers quickly to understand your book concerning the market?

In all cases, don’t misread the reader. Be honest about your book’s content. For example, you might be able to make some sales if you describe your edgy romantic thriller as a cozy happily-ever-after read, but that misrepresentation will bite you back. Misread readers are more likely to return your book (and with an eBook, returns can be done with a few clicks) and leave the dreaded one-star review.

Now let’s get to writing a description!

Guidelines for Writing a Store Description

There are many components for assembling a book’s product description: here are some of the important ones.

Pitch your book with a short, sharp summary. I recommend you study your comps’ descriptions to get the hang of how to summarize your book in a way that interests buyers.

The core of your description will be the elevator pitch, a 150–200-word rundown of what your book’s about and why they should read it. If you have experience querying your book to agents and editors, you may know how it goes.

The standard is to start with your main characters, the internal and external conflicts they’re grappling with, and the state of the story’s setting before the action begins. Then, give that inciting incident. Next, tell readers what kick-starts the story. After that, give readers an impression of how the middle act goes.

Importantly, hint at how the story resolves but don’t give away the ending. Instead, present your book’s main themes and suggest what lengths the book’s characters must go to find a resolution.

Finally, capstone your pitch with a 25–50-word closer that wraps up the core of your book. Again, make the genre and main themes clear, then include a little call to action for the buyer to purchase and read your book.

With your pitch set, you can frame it and incorporate it within the other components.

Incorporate blurbs and praise into your description. Ideally, you’d have sent advance copies to reviewers and authors so that they can hype up your book. Then if you get a shining article from a review blog, excerpt that praise.

Even better is if you secure praise from an author of one of your book’s comps, preferably someone trendy in your niche. If the author’s name alone will hook in readers, I suggest including that blurb at the very top of your description.

However, if you have neither, you can still solicit blurbs from readers you gave advance copies to. A testimonial can reassure buyers that other people have already read the book and enjoyed it, even if it’s from a random reader.

Introduce yourself with a short author’s bio. I have an article in the works that goes more in-depth on how to write an author’s bio.

For now, my advice is to give the reader a basic idea of who you are and how your experience informs the book. Remember that your biographical information serves the descriptive copy, so tailor it to sell your book.

Put to good use your retailer’s formatting. Most major retailers can elevate your description beyond plain text.

Judiciously apply bold, italics, and subheadings to your description whenever possible. Subheadings can help guide readers, and emphasizing the keywords is an effective way of showcasing the words that may hook future fans.

Some storefronts even give sellers the tools to craft extremely fancy product pages. If they allow images, put that to use, whether you need to hire a graphic designer or use Canva to prettify that one blurb from a bestselling author who loved your book.

Conclusion

There’s so much more you can play with and consider with online description copy, and that’s one of the joys of cheerleading your book. So I hope with what I’ve taught you today, you’ll find the joy in description copy and match your book with some soon-to-be-delighted readers.

Over to you: What’s your description like for your book? What questions or advice do you have for describing your book?

If you want to make a career out of book publishing, you must make peace with the fact that you will be marketing your books.

I know, not everyone’s excited by the prospect of promoting one’s work, especially us writerly types. However, read on if you’re hoping to make money from your books.

Let’s start with self-publishing. Imagine that you’ve finished your debut novel, uploaded the file to an online bookstore, and launched your book’s product page. You then leave your book there and let the website do its job in selling your book. Yay! One ticket to authorship success.

Not quite! If this is all you do, the likeliest outcome is that you will get a couple of sales—if even that—then your book slips into obscurity.

Here’s the thing about self-publishing your novel: if you don’t work to find readers for your book, no one will buy it.

On the major self-publishing platforms—like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple—there are millions of other self-publishing books competing for attention. Few titles make high on the popular sale rankings, and even fewer get featured. These listings overwhelm readers, so you’re unlikely to get many customers from browsing.

Furthermore, self-publishing books have an unfortunate reputation of being low quality, so many readers are less likely to give a self-published book a chance. Assuming you put in the work and money to get your book high-quality editing and design, these concerns should be unfounded, but you still need to get past the stigma to get the sale.

And I must make sure to emphasize this point. Even if you do everything right marketingwise, if your book is unedited, has broken formatting, and has a poor book cover and store listing, you might as well be promoting a cat’s used litterbox. Marketing only works with a good product.

So, how does an author get that book out to readers? Marketing and promotion require ongoing effort: create professional-level store listings, promote through social media, reach out to book reviewers and other promotional outlets, solicit book reviews, build your audience and mailing list, run ad campaigns, and embark on interviews and articles.

And most importantly, keep on writing and publishing books. For a career author, the backlist is gold. The more books you put out, the more ways you need to find new readers and the more sales you get from fans. With a catalog, marketing becomes multiplicative.

Meanwhile, you may be considering publishing your book traditionally. This way, you submit it to a publisher and receive help from your publishing house’s marketing department.

Yes, “trad pub” authors do benefit from receiving a marketing team alongside editorial and production staff. But here’s another hard truth: if you traditionally published your book, you still have to market.

Few authors receive a full-on marketing campaign from their publishers. Full-page advertisements and Barnes & Noble displays are usually reserved for bestselling authors, celebrities, and the rare debut author who wins the industry equivalent of the lottery with a six-figure-plus advance. More likely than not, you’re not in any of those categories.

For the rest, publishers often practice discretion in allocating their limited marketing funds. Often, they give little to no marketing budget to first-time novelists. That leaves the greenhorn author to handle most of the promotional work to earn back the advance and justify the next book.

So, why have a traditional publisher if they don’t market your books? That’s one reason why some aspiring career novelists opt for self-publishing.

But here’s another fact to keep in mind: the most successful authors are putting out bestsellers because they’re working with their publishers to promote.

Let’s loop back to those celebrities with a book deal. One dirty secret is that publishers frequently lose money on celebrity authors because those celebrities aren’t promoting their books. Millions of Instagram followers and a preestablished entertainment career don’t guarantee that a celebrity will make back the advance and marketing budget. On the other hand, the authors who do turn a profit for themselves and their publishers do their share of the marketing and work with their publishers’ departments so that everyone in the endeavor benefits.

Fortunately, all the techniques I describe for self-publishing markets also apply to traditional authors. You just happen to obtain a marketing team in a different way.

If any of this article bums you out, let me leave you with some reassurance: if you put the work into marketing and publicity, you will become better over time, and you will see more results from your promotion.

It’s like with book writing. When you’re deep into a manuscript, it’s hard to know if efforts will pay off. It’s the same with marketing, especially when it feels like you’re shouting into the void.

But both writing and marketing take time. If you plan out marketing campaigns, maintain discipline, and expand your backlist, your efforts will snowball, and you will see the results of your hard work.

I have faith in you!

Over to you: How do you feel about book marketing? What tips do you have for getting over the difficult parts of promoting your books?