Blurbs

Writing books is a business because to be able to sustain publishing operations, publishing houses must be able to retain profits out of selling them. The business model relies heavily on marketing and public relations, while the product itself is dependent heavily on the cover and packaging, aside from the content of the book itself.

A bookstore where the book will sit will find itself in competition with other books. Mostly, a cover will attract enough attention for the book to be picked up. That is the first step. This is quite hard to achieve especially if the shelves contain many bestselling authors, so the job of a good cover design is to deliver on this aspect.

But the marketing efforts doesn't just stop there. The reason people pick up a book is to read and be immersed in a world quite different from ours, so much is expected from a simple book cover. The next thing readers do is read the blurb, usually located at the back portion of the book.

The blurb mainly introduce the story in a very brief manner, without giving away too much. But the blurb must also emphasize the conflict from which the whole story will evolve, while being very careful not to reveal anything important to the climax and resolution towards the end.

And this is why writing blurbs becomes very tricky. Writing a novel is already hard, writing a synopsis is harder, and writing a blurb is next to impossible. It is true, that the art of writing a blurb is a skill upon itself. While the blurb is hard to get right, any publishable novel must be able to be reduced into a good blurb. A good story must be able to be summarized clearly and effectively to satisfy the 5Ps of marketing.

An author must be able to navigate this tricky part of the business at the onset of the dream, although a skill must be practiced more often to get mastery. The creative side of publishing is as important as the business side in commercial fiction. Writers want to make a living out of writing books, and this is only way possible when the books sell.

x--------x

Picture from Pixabay.