Blogger: Kathleen Y’Barbo, Publicist
Location: The Woodlands, Texas PR Office
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If you’ve been following along with us over the past few weeks, you should have a one-line bio and a three-hundred word masterpiece that sums up who you are and what you write. I continue to be astounded by the quality of work I’m seeing in those who have offered their bios for us to read on the site.
As we move to a different and yet related topic, I encourage you to keep sending those in. Feel free to comment on the ones submitted. Tell us what you like, what catches your attention, and what you think could be done differently. Let’s exchange ideas because it helps us all.
Let’s assume you’ve done both the short and longer version of your bio. These are building blocks for a bigger bio that you’ll need before your book releases. This larger bio goes by a number of names, but for our purposes we’ll call it the Author Questionnaire. Depending on the publisher, this questionnaire can be a few pages, a dozen pages or more. You might be tempted to hurry through the document and give answers that are not well thought out. Don’t. This is the document your publisher will use to create not only your marketing plan but also your cover art and your back cover copy.
Let’s start with the back cover copy. Writing it is a skill that not all of us have. For some, summing up a plot or a book’s theme in a paragraph or two seems impossible. I submit it is not only possible, but also quite doable. You must approach this in the same way as your 300-word bio. In fact, aim for 300 words on your back cover copy. One formula I’ve seen work time after time is to start with a general sentence that describes your story line or book’s theme and end with a question such as “When Hilary Heroine meets Hank Hero, their ship is about to sail off for foreign lands and great adventure. Can Hilary Heroine find love with Hank Hero, or will their lives be dashed on the rocks like the ship meant to take them away?” For nonfiction, you’ll want to hone in on a sentence that states the book’s major benefit for the reader.
Of course, you’ll want to add a few lines of plot description to take your reader from point A to point B, but no more than three or four sentence. And for nonfiction, you’ll want to expand on the book’s theme with three or four sentences.
The best way to practice is to read back cover copy on books similar to yours and see how you can adapt your book’s plot or theme to fit the structure.
This is an especially good exercise for authors who are still hoping to sell their books. Nothing pleases an editor or agent more than an author who can sum up a book in a clear but brief manner.
This week my challenge to you is read a number of titles’ back cover copy, then report to us what you’ve found that works. For the bravest among us, create your own cover copy and send it in for us to read.
Next week we will talk more about the elements of an author questionnaire. Meanwhile, get busy on back cover copy. I’m excited to see what you come up with!
When I read through some of the back covers on my bookshelf, I noticed three things:
1. a taste of the story
2. a taste of the writing style
3. a hook
That may be vague, but it’s what struck me.
Your posts are most helpful. I may be back later if I gather my courage to post back cover copy for my story. 🙂
Okay, I’m back with the tiniest bit of courage, and thick enough skin to desire your feedback.
Genre:Romantic suspence
(Envision the front cover with a Harley motorcycle & a girl in a bride’s dress on it. Then turn to the back cover….)
A biker chick — an outlaw gang — and a pastor who cares
Harley biker Cammie Nelson wasn’t always sporting a leather jacket and boots with a four-inch heel. As a twelve-year-old Awana scholar, she accepted Christ, and life stretched out like a dream. Fourteen years later the dream’s splattered with the mud of her mistakes. She’d like nothing better than to hide the raw places of her heart and return to the unsoiled feeling of her youth, but the motorcycle club, her only family now, takes a turn to nasty.
At the moment she decides to steer them the other way, a pastor and his music ministry team invade their park with an outdoor concert. When the preacher stalks her, she decides she’ll take the religious Adonis down and let him know she stopped trusting pastors ten years ago. In one swift karate sweep, she throws him to the ground and plants her leather boot on his immaculate white shirt. Will he leave her alone now?
Pastor Dan Martin may have had trouble convincing the match-makers to cease and desist from parading ladies in front of him, but he’s inspired his vibrant church with a passion to reach out to the community in Malibu, California. When the bound-for-heaven pastor connects with the yard-from-hell biker chick, he finds himself and his church plunged into a world of gangs and violence. Worse still, for the first time in his life, his heart’s in danger.
I love this, Teri. Great job. The only thing that jumps out is the word “AWANA” (I love Awana), but perhaps consider decoding that word for a wider audience. “As a twelve year old Bible club award winner”… or something like that. Can’t wait to read this book!
This is a great way to brush up a pitch or proposal. Here’s an initial attempt for my historical fiction, More Precious than Gold:
After the Civil War, Eliza Gentry joins the rush for gold to escape her grief and runs headlong into the man who caused it.
Six feet tall and every bit as outspoken as her preacher papa, Eliza had come to terms with life as an “unclaimed treasure”—a debutante no one wanted—until Grayson’s proposal caught her by surprise. When her father’s intern marched to war as a Confederate chaplain, Eliza promised she’d wait for his return, but a sharpshooter’s bullet shattered her dreams, killing Grayson as he pulled an injured soldier to safety.
Reconstruction violence divides her hometown, and Papa uses his influence to quell a riot, making himself a target. Labeled as Yankee sympathizers, he fears for Eliza’s safety and future prospects and urges her to live with relatives in Elizabethtown, a boom town in New Mexico territory.
Clinging to her battered faith, Eliza sets out hoping to find peace and new purpose for her life, but the western frontier is a wild place where former enemies—Yankees and Rebels, Freedmen and Indians—square off in the quest for land and gold. Eliza must confront her prejudices and fears, and Jacob Craig embodies that conflict. The mountain man wins her trust with his gentle strength, but he harbors a secret. As a Union sharp-shooter, he met her fiancé on the field of battle and cost him his life. Eliza must learn that she will not find purpose in any duty nor peace with any man until she finds first in God a faith more precious than gold.
A real ghost town comes to life in this story of love, forgiveness, and the sovereignty of God.
Okay, here’s my best swing at the back cover copy for my manuscript Immortal. I love to hear comments! So, please feel free to let me know what you think 🙂
In a world where immortals secretly walk among us, Faliese Masen collides with the love of her life, Kallen Monroe. Consumed by electrified passion she begins to realize that this fiery love they share may threaten the essence of her beautiful existence- her immortality. Her love for him is tested as she begins to realize there are more consequences to loving a mortal than she could have ever imagined. She finds herself torn between a mortal life with him or an immortal existence without him.
Although she is certain she has found her soul mate in Kallen, the guilt of lying to him about her eternal secret grows stronger each day. And what’s worse, the ever present knowledge that she will have to live through losing him to mortality someday is inescapable.
Her vast mind is capable of holding centuries of memories and even concentrating on several thoughts simultaneously, but rationalizing how she could live without Kallen leaves her coming up blank.
The closer the lovers get the more dangerous things become for Faliese. All the while Kallen seems to be becoming oddly…stronger. It appears as though they are affecting each other in unnatural ways, which leaves her questioning her otherwise spot on immortal instincts. Even their electric love can not shadow the questions that plague her conscience now.
Is Kallen really just an average mortal? Could he be feeding on her immortal essence? Or is the force of their love so strong that it’s draining away her everlasting life? Now she is faced with an impossible choice: an exhilarating immortal eternity or the love of her life.