Back Cover Blurb

The back cover blurb words are your "sales pitch". Think of what YOU would like to read about a book, that would draw you into reading it. Make it interesting. The characters have to seem really intriguing. The situation has to seem compelling. Test your sales pitch out on family and friends and ask for suggestions. Write it and rewrite it. It cannot be dry and boring. It cannot be a litany of facts. It must be engaging, exciting, and demonstrate to the reader why your book is unique. Those words must convince a reader that your book is special and deserving of their time.

Here are a few examples from real books. They give you a real sense of where the book is set, what it is about, and they make you want to learn more about the story. Can you guess which books these are from?

Against the backdrop of an elegant Cornwall mansion before World War II and a vast continent-spanning canvas during the turbulent war years, this involving story tells of an extraordinary young woman's coming of age, coming to grips with love and sadness, and in every sense of the term, coming home...

In 1935, Judith Dunbar is left behind at a British boarding school when her mother and baby sister go off to join her father in Singapore. At Saint Ursula's, her friendship with Loveday Carey-Lewis sweeps her into the privileged, madcap world of the British aristocracy, teaching her about values, friendship, and wealth. But it will be the drama of war, as it wrenches Judith from those she cares about most, that will teach her about courage...and about love.

McCourt is the eldest of eight children born to Angela Sheehan and Malachy McCourt in the 1920s. The McCourts began their family in poverty in Brooklyn, yet when Angela slipped into depression after the death of her only daughter (four of eight children survived), the family reversed the tide of emigration and returned to Ireland, living on public assistance in Limerick. McCourt's story is laced with the pain of extreme poverty, aggravated by an alcoholic father who abandoned the family during World War II. Given the burdens of grief and starvation, it's a tribute to his skill that he can serve the reader a tale of love, some sadness, but at least as much laughter as the McCourts' "Yankee" children knew growing up in the streets of Limerick.

Nothing's harder than moving back to your hometown after you've hit rock bottom--unless it's telling your high school sweetheart he's the father of your nine-year-old daughter.

Diana Smith still has feelings for Tyler Benson. But they're not lovesick kids anymore. He's a straight-arrow prosecutor, and she's a single mom struggling to make a fresh start. And there's the not-so-little matter of her lie coming between them.

Worse, she learns that revealing her secret will ruin Tyler. Diana protected him from the truth once before. Now she has to risk her own future to do it again.

Potter Mays retreats immediately after college graduation to the safe house of his childhood home. Like clockwork each morning, his mother makes him eggs, lovingly fried into hollowed-out pieces of toast. His father, in the midst of a campaign to revitalize downtown St. Louis, promises to “poke around” for gainful employment for his son. Potter’s best friend, Stuart—an “Independent Thought Contractor” working out of his parents’ lavish pool house—is willing to serve as a kind of life coach, provided, of course, that Potter pays for his services all summer.

However...

Altogether elsewhere, Potter’s (former? future?) girlfriend, Audrey, is backpacking around Europe with her beautiful bisexual traveling companion, Carmel. Potter was not invited, and getting a good night’s sleep has recently become an issue for him.

As enigmatic packages arrive from Audrey, the refuge of life at home soon proves illusory. Potter’s parents are oddly never in the same room together, the neighbor girl is looking quite adult, and Stuart’s much-needed counseling service is subcontracted to a third-party denizen of the pool house with an agenda all his own. And just what are those noises coming from the attic?

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