You may not have realized it at this point along your authorship journey, but you can start writing your blurb before you ever write the first word of your book. The question is, why would you want to? Well, there are a few of solid reasons.
Blurbing (yes, I made that up) Early Helps with Conceptualization
By even attempting to write a blurb for the book, you can often easily start to see where the holes are in your premise. If you can’t write copy that makes people interested in buying your book, it could be because there’s something missing in your content. When you’re able to write a decent blurb, it often shows that you’ve thoroughly thought through your concept and are working with a solid premise.
Blurbing Early Guides Your Writing
By writing the kind of blurb you’d like to see accompany your finished product, you’re more likely to create a book that matches that blurb. Think of it like writing the description of a dish you’re going to cook. Whatever flavors, colors, or aromas you emphasize in the description help you pay extra attention to those elements while you’re cooking the dish so that it comes out close to how you describe it in the the dish’s “blurb.”
Blurbing Early Helps with Writing Your Sales Copy
Your blurb really is just sales copy. This is the same for movie synopses, product descriptions, and company service overviews. This is the text people see before they decide whether or not they want to read your book. It helps them make a buying decision. So, if you create a draft of that copy now, when you’re finished with the book you can update it as you see fit instead of having to start from scratch after you’ve done all that writing and revising of your manuscript.
Blurbing Early Gives You Extra Content to Share
If you create a version of your blurb now, you can begin giving people sneak peeks of what you’re working on. For those of you who are struggling with what to share on social media, this is just another option to ease your content creation burden for each book.
Try It Out!
Don’t be afraid to give it a shot. Remember that the blurb is a living document. Even after publication, some authors update the copy on the back of their book to help increase their sales. You can do the same. The draft of your blurb that you come up with today may not look anything like what accompanies your book a year after it’s on the market, and that’s completely fine. Go for it!
