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Showing posts from April 17, 2009

How to Write Good Book Product Descriptions

Y esterday, I picked on some book product descriptions , pointing out some problems with them. Today, I want to discuss some ways to improve book descriptions. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something. Lead with the Best Parts Peruse a few websites that list books and you’ll see product descriptions that have been chopped off with the words “read more” at the end. Imagine visiting such a site and the only words you see for one book are “From the author of the Sacramental Sunset Series comes the… read more .” For another book you see, “A mysterious stranger comes to a pastor’s aid, only to… read more .” On which description are you more likely to click? We have no control over how much of a description a customer reads, but they all read the first words. Describe it as a Reader Would We put a lot of stuff in our books that means a lot to us as writers, but the readers see it as just part of the story, not what the book is about. I hinted at this yesterday when I cut away so much of the d...