One of the most difficult tasks for writers, but also one of the most important is the back (jacket) cover text. It must be brief but intriguing, succinct but riveting. For discussion sake, here is the back cover text for my latest book, Pure Lies, a mystery about the Salem Witch Trials. It is the same text I used for the ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) contest “pitch” and it got me through the first two rounds. Let me know what you think or share your own back cover copy.
Two women, separated by three centuries, are connected by a legacy of greed, depravity and deceit–a legacy which threatens to make them both victims of the Salem witch trials.
1692, Salem, Massachusetts Born in a time and place of fierce religious fervor, 16-year old Felicity Dale has only endless church meetings and the drudgery of chores to look forward to. When her friends begin accusing neighbors of witchcraft, she fears the devil is in Salem. By chance, however, she discovers that the accusations of her “afflicted” friends are false. What had begun as a youthful diversion has been twisted through seduction and blackmail by powerful men into a conspiracy for profit. Nineteen people will pay with their lives.
Today, Washington, D.C. Maggie Thornhill is a renowned digital photographer in Georgetown who possesses a passion for history. As her Ph.D. dissertation, Maggie takes on a project to electronically archive the original documents from the Salem witch trials. She observes discrepancies in the handwriting of the magistrate’s signature on certain land deed transfers — land that belonged to the witches. When a professor studying the documents is murdered, she begins to suspect that the trials and hangings were a result of simple mortal greed not religious superstition.
@Lynne,
It’s an intriguing part of the book and I agree it is THE pitch that makes or breaks a sale.
If we look at it in marketing terms, a product (in general) is a need satisfier or a problem solver. A fiction book is typically a need satisfier – the need for getting entertained, to dream off to a fantasy world that the author has created.
To me, therefore, the back text is the promise, i.e. the promoise to satisfy the need of the buyer. We have a contract, you know: the reader pays me for performing; I, as author wrote the best entertaining story I could come up with. The book itself is the delivery of that very promise. So the text to come up with boils down to that promise, assuming your delivery is picobello. Maybe it’s stupid, but I don’t want anyone to buy the book with wrong expectations. They will not be satisfied or may feel tricked. I want happy readers over the number of sales. Long-term (sigh – that can be VERY long indeed :)), I am convinced, that’s the way to success.
So what to put in? I think the genre must be clear, the setting (tme/place) and a little about the main characters (so the reader can already start bonding). The latter can be telly. I also think that in most instances the inciting event should be mentioned, or at least the main (or first) conflict.
All good points, Leonardo. We do have a contract with the reader and it is our responsibility to live up to the promise of the the pitch! Thanks, as always.
That’s definitely a grabber, Lynne! It makes me want to read, and it’s not my usual genre. I wonder if it’s too long for the back of a book, though–have you compared?
I just happen to have Alice Hoffman’s similar historical fiction BLACKBIRD HOUSE on my desk and turned it over to find at the top an eight-word blurb from a newspaper, then a single paragraph of under 150 words, then three more short blurb, these about ten to fifteen words long. There’s a band for reading group promo, then a segment at the bottom for cover art, publisher, ISBN, and bar code. Visually the description paragraph takes up about 1/3 of the space and seems to be in about 12-point font on a 5×8 book.
I’m in a Kindle Scout campaign right now (until Saturday 1/9) — http://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/TPHICCIFCWB — and was VERY constrained by the restrictions for each field of promo information. I have the title and author, then a tag line: “Why did she edit her wedding-day journal?” Then comes this paragraph, in just 81 words:
“Almost-spinster schoolteacher Rosette Cordelia Ramsdell married Otis Churchill on a Michigan farm in 1857. Her real-life journal recounts two years of homesteading, history hints at the next six decades, and the novel explores the truth. We meet Rosette in 1888 as she revises the wedding-day page of her journal. In lush detail, in the voices of Rosette and others, the novel traces how we both choose and suffer our destiny, how hopes come to naught and sometimes rise from the wreckage.”
I think your intro paragraph is good and tight, but the other two could be reduced by about 30% each, to hold a browser’s interest. But study the backs of other successful books in your genre and see what you think. Best wishes!
Thanks, Cindy, you make good points. I am always looking for ideas!
This is always the most difficult part of writing a novel for me. But writing the pitch always makes me distill the book down to theme and main plot. Ironically, I have to believe that if I forced myself to come up with the pitch first—forcing myself to make it as short and sweet as possible—then write the novel, I’d probably have a tightly plotted book with well developed characters, completed in half the time!
You are so right, Indy. Tackling the pitch is like the synopsis. Very difficult, but well worth the effort. Thanks for your comments!