Writing the Book Description

What to do

Write the description readers will see on your book's sales page, the main sales copy that convinces someone to click Buy.

Why it matters

The description is doing the job a back cover blurb does in a physical bookstore. It's often the single biggest factor in whether a browsing reader decides to buy, right after the cover itself.

Step-by-step

• Open with a hook, a question, a moment of tension, or a bold claim, something that makes a reader want the next sentence, rather than starting with your own biography.
• Describe what the book is about and who it's for, without giving away your ending or your whole outline.
• KDP's description field supports basic HTML formatting (bold, italics, line breaks) through the formatting toolbar above the box; use it to break up long description text into readable chunks.
• Keep your author bio, awards, or review quotes to the end of the description, if you include them at all, they support the pitch, they shouldn't replace it.
• Read it back out loud once you're done. If it sounds flat or generic, it probably needs another pass.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Writing a plot summary instead of a pitch, telling the reader everything that happens instead of making them want to find out.
• Pasting in plain text with no paragraph breaks, resulting in one dense, hard-to-scan block on the sales page.
• Leading with your author bio before the reader has any reason to care who wrote the book.

Completion checklist

0 of 1 checked

• I wrote my book description and formatted it into readable paragraphs.

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