How to write a book blurb

What a blurb has to do

A blurb has one job: to make the right reader pick up the book, or click "Buy". It does not summarize the story, it does not explain your method in full, and it does not need to be impressive. It needs to tell a stranger, in a few seconds, what kind of book this is, who it is for and why they should care.

KDP's own help page on the book description gives the same advice in plain terms: keep it simple, focus on the main plot, theme or idea, use short sentences that are easy to scan, open with a strong first sentence and make the genre clear. It suggests roughly 150 words.

A structure for fiction

Most blurbs for novels follow the same four beats. You can drop one, but rarely reorder them.

1. The hook: one sentence that sets the tone and the genre. A question, a striking situation, or a line of the character's voice.
2. The character and the world: who the main character is and what they want, in a sentence or two. Name at most two characters; a blurb is not a cast list.
3. The conflict and the stakes: what goes wrong, and what the character stands to lose. This is the part that makes the reader want to read on.
4. The closing line: a question or a short sentence that leaves the outcome open. Do not reveal the ending, nor the midpoint twist.

Here is the shape on an invented example: "Nobody leaves Saltmarsh in winter. (hook) Mara Quill came back anyway, to sell her late father's boatyard in a week. (character and want) But the tide has just returned a boat that sank thirty years ago, and the village would rather she did not ask who was aboard. (conflict) How long can you stay in a place that is hiding something from you? (closing line)"

A structure for non-fiction

A non-fiction blurb sells a result, not a plot. The usual order is the reader's problem, the promise of the book, what is inside, and why you are the person to write it.

• The problem in the reader's words, not yours: the situation they recognize.
• The promise: what they will be able to do or understand after reading. Be specific; "better habits" says nothing, "a weekly routine you can keep when you are tired" does.
• The content: two or three concrete things the book contains, in one sentence. A bulleted list is fine here if the format allows it.
• The author: one line of experience that is relevant to the subject. The full biography belongs on your author page, not in the blurb.

Length, formatting and what KDP limits

On KDP, the book description has a limit of 4,000 characters, and the editor counts HTML tags towards that total. A blurb of about 150 words, as KDP suggests, is far below the limit; the limit matters only if you add long extracts.

The description accepts a small set of HTML tags: line breaks, paragraphs, bold, emphasis, italics, underline, headings from h4 to h6, and numbered or bulleted lists. The tags h1, h2 and h3 are not supported. Use bold sparingly, for the hook or a short subheading, and keep paragraphs to two or three lines. KDP also asks you to leave out contact details, reviews and testimonials, time-sensitive information, pricing or ordering details, emojis and keywords.

The back cover of a paperback is a separate matter. The text must stay out of the binding margin, and the lower right corner is taken by the barcode. KDP says it places a white box of 2 by 1.2 inches there if you do not supply your own barcode, so leave that area empty. A printed quote from a reviewer is a normal sight on a back cover, even though it does not belong in the Amazon description.

The mistakes that cost readers

• Telling the whole plot. A blurb that explains the ending removes the reason to buy.
• Starting with the author or the title. The reader already sees both. Start with the hook.
• Vague superlatives: "gripping", "unforgettable", "a rollercoaster ride". They fit every book, so they describe none. Show the situation instead.
• Unclear genre. If a reader cannot tell within two lines whether this is a thriller or a romance, they will not guess.
• Too many names. Each new name is something the reader must remember before they care.
• Typos. KDP recommends checking spelling and grammar, and showing the description to others for a fresh set of eyes. A mistake in the first line is read as a mistake in the book.
• Writing for yourself. Read the blurbs of five bestsellers in your genre and notice their length, tense and tone before you write yours.

The blurb of a translated edition: adapt, do not translate

For KDP, a translation is a new book with its own listing, its own metadata and its own description. The blurb you wrote in English is not simply poured into Spanish or German. A word-for-word translation of a blurb usually fails for three reasons.

• The hook is cultural. A pun, an idiom or a reference that works in English means nothing, or something else, in another language. Rewrite the hook so that it works for a reader of the target market.
• The conventions differ. Genre labels, the expected tone and the length of a blurb are not the same in every market. A tone that reads as confident in English can read as boastful elsewhere. Look at the descriptions of the bestsellers in your genre on the Amazon store of the country you are targeting, which is where your readers will compare.
• The title may change. If the translated title differs from the original, the blurb must use the new one consistently, and the original title can appear on the copyright page rather than in the description.

The practical method is to translate the book first, then write the blurb with the translated text and the genre norms of the market in front of you. Keep the facts of the original (characters, setting, stakes) and rebuild the sentences around them. The same goes for your author line: a credential that means something at home, such as a prize or a school, may need a short explanation abroad, or a different one.

Finally, have the new blurb read by a native speaker before you publish. It is the shortest text in the book and the one with the greatest effect on sales, so it deserves the most careful reading.

Where the translation fits

Once the blurb is written, the order of work for a translated edition is simple: translate the manuscript, adapt the blurb and the author line to the market, then format the interior and the cover. Librolingua translates your manuscript through a five-pass editorial chain at the Essential, Premium or Excellence level, and returns it in the format of your file, with its formatting, plus an EPUB for the ebook. The blurb, being short and strategic, is the one text we recommend adapting by hand, with the translated book as reference.

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