Episode 49: From Hello to Hooked​:

Recap & Takeaways

• 01:52 Tip 1: Identify the core  value proposition of your book.
• 02:31 Tip 2: Speak directly to your audience.
• 03:15 Tip 3: Layer in  emotional appeal.
• 04:07 Tip 4: Highlight credibility and authority.
• 04:35 Tip 5: Use bullet points.
• 05:11 Tip 6: Include testimonials or endorsements.
• 05:54 Tip 7: Optimize for keywords.
• 06:47 Tip 8: Create a sense of urgency.
• 07:46 Tip 9: Compare your work to other work.
• 08:34 Tip 10: Conclude your book description with a strong call to action.
• 09:18 Tip 11: Keep your book description concise yet comprehensive.
• 10:18 Tip 12: Include social proof.
• 11:00 Tip 13: Adapt the tone to match the book’s style.
• 11:41 Tip 14: Regularly update the description.

Transcript for Episode 49: From Hello to Hooked: Crafting a Book Description that Sells

Do you struggle with selling your book on Amazon? What if I told you that the secret weapon to selling more books is right under your nose?  And this is regardless of whether it is on Amazon or  any other online bookseller. In this episode, I’m going to share with you the top strategies to create a book description that not only gets your book some attention but also gets people to buy your book.

Hello, and welcome to Episode 49 of The Author Switch. This is your host, Carma Spence, and I help entrepreneurs write and publish a book in 90 days or less. And in this episode, I’m going to be providing you with a plethora of tips, quick actionable tips that you can use to make a really powerful book description that you can put on your website, on Amazon, on Barnes and Noble, on Smashwords,  and anywhere that your book is sold online.

And once you have all these tips implemented into your book description, you’ll have a book description that attracts traffic through SEO, but also just attracts readers to your content so that they want to buy your book.

First tip. is to identify the core  value proposition of your book, because you need to know this in order to get all the other stuff done.

You want to pinpoint the primary value that someone gets out of reading your book. So, for example, with Public Speaking Super Powers, the primary value is that you will become a better speaker. You want to understand what that value is and how it benefits the reader. Because you want to make it very clear, you want to make this value statement very clear in the first line or two of your book description.

Second tip, in your book description,  speak directly to your audience, pretend that you are on a one-on-one call  with your ideal reader and you’re talking about your book with them. There’s a lot of people who will put a lot of passive language and it pulls it back. You want this book description to be immediate and you want it to be personal. Even though it’s not mentioning their name, you want them when they’re reading it to feel like it was talking directly to them.

And of course, it’s only a do that if they’re an ideal reader. If they’re not an ideal reader, they’re like, what’s this? I don’t want this, and they’ll walk away. And that’s fine because you only are interested in attracting ideal readers.

Third tip. You want to layer in  emotional appeal because, here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or nonfiction, emotion is what drives sales. You want your book description to evoke an emotion that will get them to buy. And that really depends, whether it’s a positive emotion or a negative emotion, really depends on what the topic of your book is.

So, for example, with Public Speaking Super Powers, I might evoke the feeling of confidence when you’re on stage. No longer will those butterflies be bothering you because they’ll be flying in formation. I wouldn’t use those words because that’s cliche, but that’s, that’s the, the emotion I want to evoke. That will get them to buy because they’re like, yeah, I want what she’s having.

Tip number four,  you want to highlight credibility and authority. So for example, I often will include in my book description and my saying often, we’ll come up to that later. I will often include the fact that it won three awards.

I might include that I am award winning speaker. Those are things that add authority and credibility to that book because it’s about speaking.

Tip number five. You want to use bullet points to do two things. There are two things that bullet points do. Number one, they add in white space, which makes your book description easier to read. And the second thing that a bullet point does is really highlight the key things you want your readers to understand.

Because you’re going to have people who will come in and they’ll read it, top to bottom because they’re readers, but honestly, most people are scanners and scanners are attracted to bullet points. So you want to make your bullet points really strong.

Tip number six, if  you have testimonials or endorsements, include them. Now, if you are using Amazon KDP, there’s a special place where you can add in testimonials and endorsements, but those happen way below down the page and only a really interested reader is going to go down and see those. So, you want to incorporate at least one testimonial that says, this was a book that changed my life in some way.

Something that will either say that this is a definitely must-read book, or something that provides credibility and authority. And you want to incorporate that into the actual book description itself.

Tip number seven.  And that is optimize for keywords. Now that means you’re going to have a certain number of keywords and phrases within your book description depending on its word count. You want to make sure that every keyword that someone would use to find your book is mentioned in your book description at least once, possibly twice. More than that, your book description is not going to be long enough to really support you saying something over and over and over and over again.

Now sometimes you can get around it. When you’re talking about public speaking, there is no other phrase just for public speaking, but if you’ve got something else, You want to be balanced. You don’t want your book description to read like it’s optimized for SEO. You just want it to be optimized for SEO. You still want it to read like something a human being would want to read.

Tip number eight.  And that is create a sense of urgency. Yes, I know your book’s going to be there until some point you either come up with a new edition and pull it. Well, probably, that’s probably the only reason you’d pull it. Um, so the, what you want to do is suggest that the knowledge or solutions in your book, if your reader doesn’t have them, they are missing out on something.

They’re going to make less money. They’re going to be unhealthy. Something about your book is going to change their life. And if they don’t buy it and read it now, maybe not dire things will happen, but something that they don’t want will happen. Hint it. Obviously, don’t lie. Tell the truth, but help your reader understand that your book will transform their life in a positive way and that they are leaving something on the table if they don’t buy it and read it now.

Tip number nine, and that is,  if appropriate, compare your work to other work. So, for example, you might, like, if you, if this is fiction, this is very obvious for fiction, if you liked, I don’t know, Ray Bradbury, you’ll like this book, that kind of thing. But even with nonfiction, you might say something like, if you like Alex Hermozi, you’ll like my book, you know.

Is there another author or book out there that may not be about the same topic, but it’s got the same feel, it’s got the same wisdom, something that makes it comparable, but not the same. If you like this book, you’ll like my book. So if that is applicable, it’s not applicable to every book, but if it’s applicable, use it.

Tip number 10.  Conclude your book description with a strong call to action. And the call to action you want is click buy now. You just now you want to phrase that in a compelling way, but basically you want to imply that you’ve gotten to the bottom of my book description. Now go to wherever the buy now button is and click it.

Tell them what to do. Cause even though, yes, they are on Amazon and yes, they do know how to buy a book for some reason, it just is going to encourage them to buy your book now, if you tell them to buy your book now. It’s a psychology thing. Don’t ask me.

Tip number 11,  keep your book description concise yet comprehensive. You do have a word count limit, but you don’t have to use all of it. It’s kind of like you want to have just as many words as you need to do what you need to do and not anymore. I know that’s nuanced. I know it’s not obvious, but what you want to do is, once you’ve written your first draft, go through it and ask about every sentence, every bullet point, does this sentence or bullet point, does this piece of information Does it help my cause or is it repetitive?

Does it add value to the description or am I just filling space? If it’s filling space or it’s just repetitive, take it out. You only want to be in there, what needs to be in there to make that sale.

Three more tips.

Tip number 12,  and that is include social proof. So this is a little bit different than adding in a testimonial. It’s related to adding a testimonial. It’s related to adding credibility and authority, but basically you want to include any awards that were won, any bestseller rankings.

So like, right now, because Public Speaking Super Powers was a bestseller, I can mention it was a bestseller, which means its good stuff, right? If you have any media mentions of the book, drop them in there. Basically, it’s anything that says somebody other than me thinks this book is really cool. You want to put that in there.

Tip number 13.  Adapt the tone to match the book’s style. So, if this is a humorous book, you want the book description to be humorous. You want, basically, when someone reads the book description, they should get a feel for what they can expect when they read the book. If your book is mysterious, write mysterious. If your book is romantic, write romantic. If your book is very, very, uh, newscaster y, then write newscaster y. Whatever the tone is of your book, make sure that your book description mirrors that because it helps people understand what to expect when they get your book.

And the last tip, tip number 14,  is regularly update the description and that’s why I said, I often say I’ve actually got it. in my calendar that I update it every six months. Now sometimes, if I don’t have time, I’ll let it slide to a year. But, because I really want Public Speaking Super Powers to sell, I regularly go through, and I update the book description.

In fact, I just recently completely revamped it, completely new from what it was before. And in three months I’ll know whether that worked or not because it takes three months for Amazon to tell you that you sold more copies because that’s when you get your royalties.

So I hope that these 14 tips were helpful and that you’re able to implement them.

If you haven’t written a book yet and you want to get started, I have a free gift for you. All you have to do is comment or go to Its Authorneering.com/quickstart and I will include a link in the show notes, and you can get my  QuickStart Guide for Writing Your Authority Building Short Book.

And guess what? Once you have that book, you’ll have a reason to use this book description. Also, if you need tips on your book description, get in touch with me. Set up a Curious Conversation with Carma because that is a service I also offer, is help in writing book descriptions.

So I hope you found value in today. This is the end of episode number 49 of The Author Switch Podcast. And this is your host, Carma Spence, saying ciao for now.

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