I gave in to the inappropriate temptation to rewrite: Montana Territory, November, 1885. Joe Tatyaghi is searching the icy mountains of the Great Divide for his twin brother. Jenő has become a bandit, a killer—a young man filled with enough bitterness to wish his loved ones dead. Still, Joe is determined to resolve their unfinished business—one way or another. A bullet wound interrupts Joe's quest. A rancher and his sister, Jessie, take him in and offer him not just a job, but a home. As winter melts into spring, Joe has a decision to make--embrace his new family, or pursue his past? Rich with period detail and peopled with vivid characters who must make hard choices, Brothers is a novel that a lover of immersive historical fiction will want to read.
The problem with such a condensed rewriting is that it may misrepresent the pacing and style of the book. There's a lot to be said for deferring to the author's preference regarding how compact the blurb is, especially in my case, since I haven't read a single paragraph of the work.
Well, I said that a rewrite was wrong. I just did it anyway. However, I wouldn't expect a blurb to represent the pacing of a book.
Why not? Isn't pacing important to the potential reader? If the blurb is paced in the style of a thriller, won't the reader expect a thriller?
Chicken's is more on target for marketting - the general guidance is that you should make the potential reader want to find out what happens, not tell them about what happens, and that you only name a maximum of three characters (unless you are dealing with wildly complex fantasy like GoT) In regard of pacing - you reflect that through word choice - e.g a fast paced thriller has a lot of hard urgent words in the blurb, wheras a cosy mystery will use softer words. It's not really about length In regard of CTA both Bryan Cohen and Brian Meeks advocate strongly for them - Adam croft advocates the other way and would say that people will be put off by being told what they will love. This is partly a cultural thing and depends on whether you are principally targeting the US or Uk market. (amazon unfortunately doesn't allow us to have separate blurbs for separate markets)
I feel like we could go on for a long time discussing the distinction between pacing and style, and thus hijack this thread. I'm totally up for having that discussion in another thread. A blurb and a novel are fundamentally different pieces of writing. I would expect a blurb to pretty nearly always have either a summary or a snapshot feel, and the novel itself is unlikely to have that feel.
Not to me. I found @jannert 's blurb more enticing, and there's plenty of things I wanted to find out after having read it. How things happen is generally more important than what happens, IMO. Cordwainer Smith, in the opening chapter of Norstrillia, makes this clear. He gives you the whole story, even the ending, and then writes: See, that's the story. Now you don't have to read it. Except for the details. They follow. And that's where the pleasure of reading (and re-reading) is: in the the details.
Sure - but may be you arent the typical market - I'm going by what Bryan Cohen says about blurbs (and to a lesser extent Meeks and croft) - Bryan runs Best Page Forward which writes blurbs for some of the biggest names in the business including big trad clients... I think its fair to say that he knows what works
Oh, bloody hell. I love it! As a shorter version, this rocks. Thanks!!! Do you mind if I snaffle it? For a short blurb offering? I may tweak it a bit, but hey. I will keep the longer version, probably for the actual back cover. But this is great for the Amazon snippet.
LOL. The amusing thing about that is, blurbs don't matter for "the biggest names in the business." All they need is their name on the cover (even if they didn't write the book.) But I'm done here. I take it all back.
I don't mean the King/ Child/Patterson level - I'm thinking more people like Mark Dawson who made a million dollars last year, or John Sandford (pubbed by Simon and Schuster , who would have actually been the client in that case) They are relatively well known writers but they absolutely need a good blurb to sell to people who haven't heard of them.
Yeah, I noticed that when I was researching my blurbs. The bigger the author, the less the blurb. In fact, many of them simply have a back cover filled with endorsements. This is the best thing since sliced bread.—Famous Author A. Too cool for school.—Famous Author B. Etc. It's only us untried plebs who need to struggle with a blurb, apparently! Ach well. I'm self-pubbing. I'll never reach those giddy heights.
Dawson and Croft both self pub As does LJ Ross who was simultaneously 1,2,3,4 and 5 placed in the kindle, whole store for two whole weeks last year
I hate to be a P in the A but honestly this whole thing is still not sitting right with me. I think the problem is what you have is rather vague. You tell us something is wrong between the brothers but you don't really tell us what. You tell us Jeno is a bandit and killer but you don't give us any specifics, like who he's killed, or how Joe knows that, or how that has affected either of their lives or the lives of those around them. You say Joe wants to resolve their unfinished business-one way or another--and I'm not exactly sure what means (presumably not retesting those beyond friendship boundaries). You say Joe receives a bullet wound but you don't tell us how he got it or who gave it to him. You say he's falling for Jessie, but we don't why he's falling for her, or anything really about her at all. Then you say he has to choose between taking responsibility for his brother and living the life he really wants, but I don't really see any inciting incident that would cause this ultimatum. Is his brother killing people around town? Is there word that Jeno is trying to flee to Canada or Mexico, and Joe has one more shot to get him? Another way to look at this is (I personally think), what is it you're trying to sell me? Is it your wit? Is it the drama between the brothers? Is it the drama between Joe and Jessie? Pick one and make it come alive. Right now, I see all these various elements, but none of them are really (imo) at full throttle.
Thanks. I'm letting this rest for a little while because I succumbed to tinkeritis yesterday, and tinkered it to death. However, I'm also basing what I did on other blurbs that I've been reading. (That aren't just a list of endorsements.) I think (for my genre anyway) I have to strike a balance between overly simplistic three-sentence statements, and retelling the entire book. For example, 'who shot him,' isn't revealed in the book till some way into it, so I'm not going to tell you who it is in the blurb. The salient point is that it takes getting shot to stop his determined search and divert Joe to another environment altogether—where he's given new possibilities to consider. I think the question I need to answer is: would people be turned off the book by what I'm giving them in this blurb? Or would they want to read it to find out the answer to these questions raised by the blurb? The last thing I want is to turn people off. At the same time, I don't want to make everything so plain that they don't need to read the book! Reducing the book to one simple issue doesn't work for me either. At least I haven't found the key to doing that. Yet. It's not easy. However, having looked at actual books, and considered them as an actual reader and buyer of books myself ...hey, there isn't one 'true' method. Like books themselves, different kinds of blurbs appeal to different kinds of readers.
Go with your gut, @jannert. Remember the second rule of writing: if you like it, other people will too. (the first rule being: A writer writes.) I thought the purple versions was fine: I'd have cracked the cover to read the first page. You trod the fine line between creating intrigue and sowing confusion pretty well with that one, and I didn't see any turn-offs in it. Just one small place where it could be terser. I do think, though, you're suffering from one handicap: You're insisting on an honest blurb. I'm not sure the professional blurb writers do that.
I think I'm trying to look at this as a reader of books would look at it. Would this make me want to read the book? I don't want to be sold a product. I want to be interested in the story. As a self-pubbed author who isn't looking to set the heather on fire with gigantic sales figures, I'm more interested in attracting the right readers for my book ...even if their numbers are relatively small. For example, this isn't a book for anybody who wants a quick read. It's around the 200,000 word mark. I've been told by many betas that it's an easy read, but it's not a book for somebody who wants a quick trot through the tulips either. It's straightforwardly told, but internally complex, if that makes sense. It's a character-driven story, rather than an action-driven one. The setting and historical detail also plays a big part in why people who have read it seem to like it. Yes, I want an honest blurb. As far as my style of writing goes, I'll let the Amazon 'look inside' feature take care of that.
So, just speaking for myself, I don't peruse blurbs looking for things that would turn me off a book. Rather, if there's nothing that sells me on the book, I go elsewhere. I haven't read your book but I have 100% confidence it is great. All you have to do with the blurb (so far as I'm concerned) is to convince people to read it. It sounds like maybe you're less interested in convincing readers to give your book a try, and more interested in accurately conveying to readers what they will get in the book? If the latter, then I'd say you and those who have read your book will know the answer best.
Yeah, I'm not saying I know what I'm doing—because I don't, quite. I just say I know what I'm NOT planning on doing, if that makes sense. But I'll let this rest for a while, and get back to it with fresh eyes. That always helps. I have to say the myriad suggestions and responses I've received here on this thread have been amazingly helpful. Not only have I had some great suggestions which I've tried to take on board, but I've also had insight into other ways of looking at a blurb. I've never been a master of brevity, so this has been hard for me. It's a real learning curve.
I'd also say don't beat yourself up - blurbs are never easy, and blurbs for a book like this are a lot harder than for a straightforward thriller or romance. I've started doing a bit of blurb writing as a side hustle via upwork and fiverr, but I wouldn't take a project like this on. (there is a reason that best page forward charge $350 per project whereas i charge a fraction of that)
@jannert, when I get done with the Beta read, I will help with the blurb if you like. Sometimes it helps to have someone other than the writer wrt9ite the blurb. You don't want to tell the story, you want to make the reader want to read the story, and I found that very hard with my own. BTW I am through book2 and think it is a fantastic story, the imagery is among the most vivid I have ever read. Finishing this story has taken precedence over my own writing!
Thanks, Lew. I've actually made some major changes (mostly cutting stuff) from the second AND third book. Still working on the third book cuts, but a little game called Modding has somehow eaten up some of my time lately. Glad you're enjoying the read. Tell Karen she might want to hold off till I finish making the changes and send her the updated version. ......edited Just sent you an email attachment of the latest version of Book Three. Still a bit more editing to do, based on my other beta's observations. But I've already cut a few things out, and changed stuff in a couple of places. You might want to read the 'new improved' version!
