The back cover of your book gives you an opportunity to sell the content to a potential reader, but what elements do you need to have upon it, and why should you spend more time that you may think in getting this right?

First of all, the book’s back cover is a sales opportunity for you as an author, it enables you to give a clear reason as to why the reader would want to delve into the pages within and buy your book, the message you have upon the back page will differ slightly from fiction to non-fiction, but it’s job will be the same.

The Blurb
Looking at fiction first of all, the back page should contain a short synopsis of your story, giving some tantalizing details where you introduce the main characters, hit the reader with a hook to make them want to find out more, set out the landscape (time and location) and be aimed at your target audience (the language you would use in a historical adult fiction novel will be different to that of a children’s book for the under 10s of course).

Writing a blurb for the back of your book can be a very time consuming task, we’ve known authors take weeks and even months to write, rewrite, tweak, update, edit and finally publish a burb which is no more than 250 – 300 words.
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And although this text is less than a standard page within your book, it’s importance in sales is so key that it is worth every minute of your time, ensuring that you have a highly polished and effective back page.