Julie Broad (founder of Book Launchers) explains how to write nonfiction book descriptions that sell. Key points: the description’s job is to sell (not summarize) and must open with a reader-focused hook, create curiosity, include teasers of useful content, establish brief author credibility, and include target keywords for Amazon discovery. She contrasts good and bad opening sentences, gives a checklist of elements to include/avoid, recommends two different lengths (120–160 words for back cover; up to ~250 words for online listings), and suggests keyword tools (KDP Spy, KDP Rocket, Google Keyword Planner).
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Book descriptions are really important to selling your book and making those Amazon ads convert. So if you aren't sure if you have a good book description or you're trying to write one for your nonfiction book, stick around. This video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julia the Book Broad, author and founder of Book Launchers, a self publishing services team that will help you write, publish, and sell a fantastic new nonfiction book. People ask me all the time what makes book Launchers different. And really, there are two things. Number one, we're not just about creating a book for us. It's about what the book can do for you and your goals. So we want to help you create the right book to achieve those business goals. And number two, we care a lot. My team is networking on the weekends in their own time to find opportunities for authors to get the word out. One person on my team created an index for a client at no charge in her spare time because, well, his book really needed it, she said. So we won't help you create a boring book, but if you want to create a fantastic book that you're proud to hand to anyone, let's chat. Here's a link right here. Book launchers.com application so once you've written that great book, you have to shift all your brain power to marketing. And one of the most important pieces of marketing is creating a cover and a title that will sell your book. Once you've got that, your book description has to make that potential reader pull out their credit card and hit order now. So let's be super clear about what the book description does do. Its job is to sell your book. Period. It's not a summary of the entire book. The book description is a salesman or saleswoman. It's probably a saleswoman. The job is to make the ideal reader need to read the book, not just want they need to read the book. And the opening sentence of that book description must grab attention immediately and it should not be about the author. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. Your book might be about you, but it's not for you. So show the reader what's in it for them. What is the hook of your book? Or what is the biggest promise of your book? Open with that. If you haven't seen my video on the hook of a book, check that out right here or here. I never know which side they're going on, but wait until you've watched this video first, then go watch that one. Back to that opening sentence. Let me give you a few examples I like and one I do not like. This one's from Educated by Tara Westover. It's a memoir born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho. Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. It's about her, but it makes you curious after all those years, what it was like to go into a classroom for the first time. This one's from exactly what to Say by Phil Jones Often the decision between a customer choosing you over someone like you is your ability to know exactly what to say, when to say it, and how to make it count. So that tells you what's in it for you very clearly. No More Feedback by Carol Sanford Peer review is the foundation for measuring employee performance, but does it help employees realize their full potential? That creates curiosity and it alludes to what's in it for you. Now here's one I don't like. This is from this Is Marketing by Seth Godin, somebody who I think is brilliant. But here's his opening description. Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders and fans from all walks of life via his blog, online courses, lectures and best selling books. That is 100% about Seth Godin. And sure, he's an awesome creator and entrepreneur, is practically a poster boy for self publishing. But that's a terrible way to start a book description because it has absolutely nothing to do with the reader. Here is a quick checklist of what your book description should include. Hit some emotions Pain if you're solving a problem, tension or curiosity if it's a memoir. Check. Create that curiosity. And most importantly, you must create curiosity about what's inside the book that they haven't read before. How is their life going to be different when when the book is over? Or what they will experience while reading this book that they're not getting from Netflix or Amazon prime or some other thing they could be doing with their time now. The check mark clearly tease or showcase some of the best tips, tools or secrets in this book. If the author has a cool acronym or steps to solve a common problem in an uncommon way, or they reveal unknown facts, these are great things to tease in the description. Ideally, these are little tidbits that should go in bullet points. Another check Credibility Creating Sentence There should also be a sentence or two about the author and why they are the one person who can teach you this, share this, or be the one that you're going to spend 2, 4, 6, 8 hours as you read their book. Check mark. Finally, keywords A great book description also includes the keywords you want to be found for. If you're planning on running Amazon ads that will convert, this is extra important because you'll struggle to get your ads shown for specific keywords if you are not hitting the mark with them in your book description. So the key is to have a handful of keywords that you know you want to be ranking for and sprinkle them into your book description appropriately. Now a little tip if you decide to write this yourself, if you were trying to find a solution to this problem, what would you type into Google or YouTube to find that solution? Or to find somebody who could help you solve this problem that might be the lead statement or a big part of your description? Finally, I should note that we create at Book Launchers two different descriptions for each of the books we work on. The first is for the back cover and the the second is for online places where the book will be featured. We do this because the word count for the back cover has to be tight. No wasted words. We're shooting for 120 to 160 words for the back cover. Max the Amazon and Goodreads pages or the other places we're going to feature the book, it can go as high as 250 words. Well, there's actually no space limit, but too long and it might not be something that grabs attention and reads. You still want it to be concise and attention getting, but you can write more words so we will have longer descriptions for those things. Here's what you need to avoid being all about the author being too short and being boring. If you make it sound like everything your ideal reader has read before, even if your book is phenomenal, they're not going to pick it up. Writing great book descriptions is hard. We have professional copywriters write every book description for our clients and then we internally edit, rewrite, send it back to the copywriter, and then finally send it to our clients. It usually goes through six or seven iterations before it's ready for a proofread and to be used. It takes time and effort to get it good, but it is so important for selling your book that it's worth it. Like this tip. Smash that thumbs up button. Subscribe to the channel so we can be YouTube besties. I reply to almost every single comment posted and when a video comes out, if you comment the day it's released, you'll be entered to win some sweet Book launchers. Swag. Oh, you're still here. I love it when you stay to the end and sometimes I save the best stuff until the end. Just as a thank you for sticking with me to the very last words, here's a final tip. How do you know what keywords to use? Well, we use KDP Spy and KDP Rocket to do the research. I'll have some links below in the comments for you. You can gauge it to a degree using Google's free keyword search tool, but know there's some variance between what people search for in Google and what they're searching for on Amazon, which is why paid tools like KDP Rocket and KDP Spy are so useful. Enjoy.
