Amazon gives you 4,000 characters for your book description. That’s a lot of space to craft a compelling blurb, but a longer blurb isn’t necessarily what your book needs to sell.
Instead of fluffing out a description to take up the allotted space, many successful Kindle authors will use their book descriptions for other uses as well.
Here are some of the more common elements you can fit into a book description—beyond and besides the classic blurb:
Book Description Elements
Tagline
Your tagline is like your blurb, but shorter. Much shorter. This is the brief one-liner that captures the sentiment of your entire book, often presented in a bolder font at the top. Some promo sites will want you to have a tagline separate from your description, so it’s always a good idea to have one.
An alternative to a tagline might be a brief excerpt from your book, a sentence or short paragraph that displays your style and the tone you’re aiming for. Done right, this will place your writing on a pedestal before readers even reach your blurb.
Blurb
You already know about this part, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it. For a clearer walk-through on how to write an eye-catching blurb that readers will fall in love with, you can check out my article on writing a compelling book description here.
Endorsements/Reviews
Did your favorite book blogger give you a raving review? Your description space can be a great place to post what others think of your books so that readers can know they’re making the best choice.
The reviews you share here can be for this book, or for something else you’ve written. Just make sure you specify which before sharing.
Comp Titles
If you’re still establishing yourself or if this is the first book in a new series, you might want to list authors and books similar to yours. Fans of those books will connect you with those names and get more excited to see what you have to offer.
This is especially effective if you’re writing in a mainstream genre and don’t want to get lost in the crowd. Since popular genres feature books in broadly different styles and scratching different itches, you can help readers make a better decision by telling them upfront what kind of book they’re getting.
Other Relevant Information
Does your series need to be read in order? Is your romance novel contain explicit material on every page, or is it actually very sweet?
It might seem redundant to spell out the mechanical properties of your book after you’ve already crafted such a compelling description, but this is the kind of information readers often want to know before they buy, especially if they’ve never heard of you before.
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