6.5 Blurbs and comments
Please remember that in both the blurb game and the comment game, you’re opening possibilities. You’re surprising yourself.
The blurb game
Imagine…
If Taylor Swift wrote a blurb for your book cover, what would you want her to say? Not just this is a great book, but how would you want her to personalize it?
And then who else would you want blurbs from, and what would they say?
Oprah Winfrey
Stephen Colbert
Your favorite novelist
Your favorite self–help author
Your best friend
Your mom
A secret admirer
Etc.
You can do this on your own or with a group of friends who know something about what you’re writing.
You might do this just for fun, but this game might also…
Help you ramp up your ambition for your book.
Help you see more clearly your strengths as a writer, instead of being overly modest, and then build on those strengths.
Help you see something that’s missing from your current draft that you want to make sure to include in your book.
There might be other surprises, too, that will enrich your writing.
And when it comes time to write your proposal or do your marketing, you might find that you’ve come up with some phrases in playing blurb aficionado that will be very helpful in catching attention and putting across to an agent or possible customer what’s special about your book.
The comment game
Pretend your book is on the Amazon website, with a beautiful cover and great description. Then imagine the comments from ordinary run–of–the–mill readers that you would like to see there.
Ask yourself…
What would make my heart sing?
What would make all the work of writing feel worth it?
This game can…
Help you get clear about the relationship you want with your readers.
Help you focus on what you need to do to get the comments you want.
It’s all too easy to get so involved in your writing, so tangled up in trying to make it the best it can be, that you forget about your readers. And they drift into the background.
This game is a way to keep your readers front and center all through your writing process.
Here’s something else you can try if you want. Pick a handful of books that are in the same ballpark as the one you’re writing, then skim through their comments and copy down any that you would like to get.
The other advantage of reading through these comments on books like yours is that you can make a decision about whether you want to read the comments on your book once it’s published, or not.
You know how crazy and mean the comments section of anything can get.
There are best–selling authors who never look at any of their comments. And I recommend this, unless you’ve got a good reason to scroll through the zoo, like…
Maybe you’ll collect a few goofy, oddball comments you can use in a humorous way in a keynote.
Or maybe if you read some attacking comments, they’ll make you so mad you’ll be more intense and passionate and persuasive in a podcast interview.
But if you don’t have at least a little bit of a thick skin, I’d recommend leaving the comments alone. Just collect appreciations from kindred spirits and supportive readers. We humans in the aggregate tend to be more than a little nuts.
When you play the comment game, you might collect some phrases or perspectives that will turn out to be very useful in working up your publicity and marketing materials.
