How to Write a Blurb: Summing Up Your Book Effectively

In an author’s arsenal of marketing tools, one of the most underestimated-yet-powerful weapons is the humble book blurb. This summary tells readers what your book is about and (hopefully) convinces them to buy it — but it’s not just a summary. A good blurb must walk a fragile line between revealing just enough information vs. too much, and should be structured meticulously in order to attract your target readers.

So what exactly should a blurb contain, how long should it be, and what’s the best way to go about writing it? This guide will cover it all, along with some book blurb examples from recent bestsellers to illustrate exactly which elements make for a successful blurb in certain genres.

What is a book blurb?

First off, let’s define this feature in detail. A book blurb is a 100-to-200-word description that explains the premise of your book — typically introducing its main protagonist(s) and conflict, and not much else. Your blurb should leave readers wanting more.

Indeed, in both fiction and nonfiction, a well-constructed blurb prompts readers to wonder: what’s in this book that’s not in the description? If you’ve done the job right, they won’t be able to resist finding out.

Your book blurb will appear on Amazon and any other online product pages for your book, as well as on your own website, in external PR pieces, and on the back cover or inside jacket of any physical copies (if you end up printing it). So while you can always tweak your blurb to fit a given platform, it’s best to have a strong, marketing-friendly baseline from which to work.

And of course, if your blurb is optimized from the start, you won’t lose any potential sales during the early days of your book launch! On that note — let’s jump into how to write a sales-worthy book blurb in four simple steps.

How to write a blurb for your book

1. Hook readers in the first line

Conventional book marketing wisdom states that first lines are everything. This applies not only to the opening of your book, but to the first line of your blurb as well.

Your blurb’s “hook” is your chance to grab readers, to entice them, to plant that seed of what will happen next? Basically, without a decent hook, you’re setting up the rest of your blurb — and therefore your book — for failure. (Not to scare you, but just to drive home its importance!)

Take a look at these striking “first line hooks” from some recently published novels, and think about how you might conjure a similar effect:

🌊 This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It's not a romance, but it is about love. — from the blurb for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

😰 In 1980, a wealthy businessman named Carl Fletcher is kidnapped from his driveway in the nicest part of the nicest part of Long Island. — from the blurb for Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

🏙️ The city stops for no one. — from the blurb for Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna

The good news about creating your hook is that, as shown by these examples, you can take a number of different tacks. You might intrigue readers with a semi-contradictory statement, as in the blurb for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. You might present a dramatic situation, as in Long Island Compromise. Or you can grab readers’ attention with a single stark yet poetic line, as in Evenings and Weekends.

And if you’re struggling to figure out what your blurb’s hook should sound like, try coming up with a few options, then asking someone else’s opinion. They can serve as a “test reader” to ensure your blurb is clear and engaging, before it’s exposed to real readers on the market.

2. Let them know what’s at stake

Once you’ve nailed down that first line, you’re ready to get into the “meat” of your blurb. This is where you’ll describe your plot, characters, and conflict — again, providing just enough information to leave readers wanting more.

So after your “first line hook” (which may technically be 1-2 sentences), you’ll need to (briefly!) explain your premise, name a main character or two, and ultimately — this part is crucial! — pose a question or statement that implies what is at stake for your main character(s). Is it their job; their relationship; their identity; their safety?

The stakes don’t have to be life-threatening, but you do need to somehow make readers care about them. To see how this can be done, let’s examine the full blurb for Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow:

This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It's not a romance, but it is about love.

 

When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning, he is catapulted straight back to childhood, and the hours they spent immersed in playing games.

 

Their spark is instantly reignited and sets off a creative collaboration that will make them superstars. It is the 90s, and anything is possible.

 

What comes next is a decades-long tale of friendship and rivalry, fame and art, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones. And, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

In just over 100 words, this blurb introduces not one but two main characters; lays out the premise, which is that Sadie and Sam start a games company together; and clearly articulates what’s at stake — their friendship, their professional success, and what will unfold in their romantic lives (as the “hook” implies that they won’t end up together).

Note also how this blurb uses different sentence structures and multiple line breaks to keep the reader’s attention. These might seem like minor details, but trust us: even a single overlong paragraph can cause readers to lose interest in an otherwise-promising blurb!

In any case — while the specifics will obviously differ from book to book — the premise, main characters, and stakes are the key ingredients here. But to continue the cooking metaphor: how exactly should you season and prepare those ingredients in your own blurb?

This question segues nicely into our next step, which is to…

3. Refine the tone of your blurb

We’ve covered a few tactics for hooking readers with your blurb’s first line, as well as the other elements to include throughout. However, another important piece of context here is tone.

Tone is the main thing that differentiates blurbs from genre to genre — a romance blurb, for example, typically strikes quite a distinct tone from a crime novel’s blurb, and vice-versa. The “ingredients” remain the same, but different tones allow you to create very different effects.

To ensure you’re landing on the right tone for your blurb — that is, one that will convey the contents of your book and tell readers it’s “for them” — here are a few things to consider:

• The tone of your actual book. It sounds obvious, but you don’t want there to be a major disparity between how your book sounds and what your blurb implies (another phrase for this is “false advertising”). For example, if you’ve written a humorous novel, you might make your blurb a bit sassy; if you’ve written a mystery, your blurb should be written in an enigmatic way that heightens suspense. Think of it as a taster for your novel — it should accurately represent what readers can expect in the dish.
  
  
• Other books similar to yours. Or if you’re not totally sure how to translate your own book’s tone, another surefire strategy is to look at books similar to yours — to study their blurbs and to potentially use them as comp titles! Such comp titles can be used to position your book in a more familiar, appealing context for readers; for example, “This book is Crescent City meets The Hunger Games.” While not every blurb will necessarily benefit from comp titles, these books are always useful to consider in terms of your genre(s) and what “works” within a blurb.
  
  
• Your blurb’s word count. Your blurb’s tone depends almost as much on its length as it does on word choice. A lengthy blurb implies a denser, more “literary” work, while a short, to-the-point blurb may imply something more “digestible.” Neither of these is “wrong,” per se, but make sure that you’re not misrepresenting your book — again, it all comes back to attracting your target audience.

4. Edit as needed for various platforms

Remember how we said it was important to have a strong baseline for your blurb? At this point — with a great hook, a sprinkling of plot, and a genre-friendly tone — you’ve got that baseline down! Now all that’s left is to make tweaks based on the platforms (or real-life spaces) where you’ll be selling your book.

We noted earlier that your book blurb should be somewhere in between 100-200 words, and that holds true regardless of platform. However — in addition to the consideration mentioned just above, about ensuring your blurb’s length doesn’t put off your target audience — there are a few platform-specific tips to take into account:

• On Amazon and other online bookstores, you’ll want a blurb of roughly 150 words, ideally with multiple line breaks to make your blurb easy to read. Note that perfecting your hook is particularly important for Amazon blurbs, because your product page will only show a small amount of text above the “Read more” button. Basically, you’ve got a tiny window in which to grab readers — so make it count.
  
  
• On your author website, you can have a slightly longer blurb of 200 words or so, if you have that much to say! This is acceptable because most visitors to your website will already be familiar with your work, and don’t need to be “sold” on it with a quick blurb — in fact, they’re probably on your website to get more information. So this is the place to lean into a longer blurb, and include those fun additional details you couldn’t quite squeeze into the Amazon version.
  
  
• On the physical back cover of your book (if applicable), you should limit your blurb to 125 words or less. This is partly because you’ll now be competing with physical books in a store, which are even more tempting than Amazon thumbnails. It’s also because less text tends to look better, design-wise, on a physical book; indeed, some bestsellers these days have just a few words to create a more striking effect.

In addition to whatever you’ve put down for your actual blurb, you may also wish to include some quotes from reviewers on your Amazon page, product page on your website, etc.

One common tactic these days is to “frame” your blurb with quotes above and below it — typically with a couple of particularly strong quotes above the jump, then your blurb, then several more quotes beneath it. Like this:

Book blurb examples to emulate

Now that we’ve covered how to write a book blurb in detail, let’s put it all together with some blurb examples from recently published titles. If you’re still not sure how you want your blurb to sound, maybe these will give you some inspiration!

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman whom she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss.

 

One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…

The blurb for Big Swiss, a zany work of literary fiction, clearly establishes its unorthodox tone through a few key details: the Dutch farmhouse full of bees, the sex therapist named Om, etc. However, it also does a neat job of presenting the main characters, their relationship, and what’s at stake — Greta’s deception being discovered — in order to get readers genuinely interested.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

 

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

 

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

 

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

At this point, Sally Rooney can sell books on name recognition alone; nonetheless, this blurb for Intermezzo is compelling even for new readers. It even gets away with mentioning multiple characters, mostly because they’re described so well: “[Peter’s] enduring first love” and “a college student for whom life is one long joke” is all you need to know about Sylvia and Naomi here. Let these character descriptions be a lesson to all blurb writers — succinct yet vivid, facilitating readers’ emotional investment even with very little information.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.

 

So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

 

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.

 

But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

This blurb for Yellowface, a contemporary satire of the publishing industry, perfectly demonstrates how to grab readers’ attention from the get-go. From the immediate shock of Athena’s death to the brilliantly twisted premise of June stealing her work and identity, this blurb keeps you hanging on — and makes you desperate to know if June gets away with it or not.

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel

For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly eight years—in museums and cathedrals all over Europe—Breitwieser, along with his girlfriend who worked as his lookout, stole more than three hundred objects, until it all fell apart in spectacular fashion.

 

In The Art Thief, Michael Finkel brings us into Breitwieser’s strange and fascinating world. Unlike most thieves, Breitwieser never stole for money. Instead, he displayed all his treasures in a pair of secret rooms where he could admire them to his heart’s content. Possessed of a remarkable athleticism and an innate ability to circumvent practically any security system, Breitwieser managed to pull off a breathtaking number of audacious thefts. Yet these strange talents bred a growing disregard for risk and an addict’s need to score, leading Breitwieser to ignore his girlfriend’s pleas to stop—until one final act of hubris brought everything crashing down.

Another masterful blurb, this time for nonfiction, is the one for The Art Thief by Michael Finkel. Here, we’re given the simple yet intriguing premise of a prolific art thief, which becomes irresistible throughout a sprinkling of standout details — ending on the note that “one final act of hubris” led to his downfall. Of course, by not revealing what that act was, the blurb creates just the right balance of knowledge and suspense to get readers to buy the book.

Solito by Javier Zamora

Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago — “one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”

 

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

 

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

Lastly, this blurb for Solito by Javier Zamora makes use of a particularly strong first line, then launches straight into a vivid summary of this book’s contents. Once again, the blurb gives just enough away — and uses just enough wrenching detail (“perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns”) — to engage readers, yet also leave them wanting more.