Support for Indie Authors discussion

Another writer in a writing group I'm in pointed out some issues he saw with my book description and while I agree with a lot of the points he made I'm unsure about some of them. I thought I would get a second opinion to see if anyone else picks up on the same things he did. Please be brutally honest (I can take it) and thank you for your help.

The book is called Mobile Home Murder and the headline and description are:

A funny new amateur detective series that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Julie Jones has finally retired and she’s bored out of her mind. She lives in an over fifty five mobile home park in Florida with her husband, Norman, who’s let himself go. Life gets interesting when she follows her husband's suggestion to become the park detective. What starts out as a little fun solving local mysteries leads to a full on investigation of a missing woman. Suzy Stillwater has disappeared and the police have given up looking for her. Julie seizes the opportunity to investigate a real crime despite her husband’s objections that it’s too dangerous. Julie suspects he’s more concerned about what might be going on between her and the handsome reporter she’s been getting information from. Her husband is just one person on a long list of people standing in her way, but she’s having too much fun exploring a new world of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, love triangles, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more. Will she be able to figure out what happened to Suzy before she ends up in jail herself?

Okey dokey;

Firstly, teeny weeeny paragraphs are required.
Thanks to the modern age of social media we have been conditioned to digest info in small chunks.

With this in mind you may want to make the whole blurb a little shorter? Sweet, sharp and punchy.

:-)

I read the blurb in the New Sales thread, in context with the cover, title and sub-title mentioning Julie Jones. As a package deal, I like it a lot. It's lively, and the last part about gnome theft really supported my first impression. The cover is bright. So it works for me.
Taken in parts, cover here, blurb there, my thought is that it's harder to comment on. I want to look/read the whole package, which I did.
My 2 cents! :-)

Here is a couple things:

"Edge of your seat?" Really? This implies that the writing within the story will be full of detective cliches.

Retired from what? Was she a soft house keeper or a fit SWAT Sniper?

Julie Jones, Susie Stillwater? Sounds like a kids comic book. Does the story have a Peter Parker?

Break up the text into a few paragraphs.

Tease, don't tell. Refer to murder, disappearances, but not name the actual characters involved.

I really like the premise for this story. It has good potential for humor and characters. Maybe even a touch of dark...

Thanks for the comments everyone. There's lots of good points here, so I'll definitely be doing some rewriting. I'm new to writing book descriptions and you've given me a lot of good tips here.

Martin, it's funny you mention it sounds like a comic book because I actually write a family friendly comic strip and love comics. Some of my comic characters are Matt Madigan and Kelly Kay. It probably had some influence on the names for the book, but I think they're more fun. Good point on the "edge of your seat". I'll have to rethink that one.

Shannon wrote: "Another writer in a writing group I'm in pointed out some issues he saw with my book description and while I agree with a lot of the points he made I'm unsure about some of them. I thought I would ..."

Too long. Too much info. Shorten it. Come up with a good hook -- Example -- Nosey neighbor morphs into amateur sleuth. Investigation of missing woman hits a dead end but Julie Jones plunges in and puts her curiosity to work.

Sounds like a fun read. I live in FL (but not in a trailer park) and am retired. You've got a big target audience in FL. Lots of retirement communities.

Good Luck.

G.T. wrote: "Shannon wrote: "Another writer in a writing group I'm in pointed out some issues he saw with my book description and while I agree with a lot of the points he made I'm unsure about some of them. I ..."

Thanks, G.T. I'm glad I asked for input here because the writer in my other group who was giving me feedback told me he thought there wasn't enough detail and many of you are saying I have too much. I tend to agree that it shouldn't be too long with too much info, which was one of the reasons why I thought I'd get some other opinions.

Whereabouts in Florida are you? My parents are snowbirds who own a mobile home in an over 55 park in Sarasota. I've visited them there over the past four years and hanging out in that park is where I got the idea for the book. I agree with you that there are definitely lots of retired people out there. Someone told me when winter comes Sarasota almost doubles its population because of snowbirds.

I might use this line:

"a new world of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, love triangles, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more."

as a headline instead. It catches my attention more than the rest and gives me an idea of the antics to expect right off. Good luck with your book :).

Marie wrote: "I might use this line:

"a new world of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, love triangles, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more."

as a headline instead. It catches my att..."

Thanks for the input, Marie, I was wondering if that line should come a bit sooner too.

My only comment is that it's generally good to have the blurb reflect the style and tone of the book, as opposed to trying to write in a "blurb style". If the writing to concise and punchy, make the blurb concise and punchy. If the style is more relaxed and conversational, write the blurb that way. In my view, it's just as important that a blurb filter readers as entice them -- there's little point in trying to hook readers that aren't going to enjoy the book.

I agree that this line: "a new world of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, love triangles, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more" works well as a the basis for tag line. It states right up front what is unique about the book, and how it stands out from other book in the genre. If a tag line can be equally well applied to large number of books, it's less likely to get people's attention.

Your book sounds like a great deal of fun! Best of luck with it!

Owen wrote: "My only comment is that it's generally good to have the blurb reflect the style and tone of the book, as opposed to trying to write in a "blurb style". If the writing to concise and punchy, make th..."

Thanks, Owen. You bring up a great point and I feel like my book is more fun to read than the description, so that is another thing I'll be working on. It's looking like this will be a lot harder than I thought, but seeing as the description is what is going to attract people to read the book it will be worth the effort.

Shannon wrote: "Thanks, Owen. You bring up a great point and I feel like my book is more fun to read than the description, so that is another thing I'll be working on. It's looking like this will be a lot harder than I thought .... "

Writing blurbs is pretty much the bane of our existence. But there appears to be no way around them. One suggestion (for what it's worth -- probably not much) is to maybe try breaking down your key points into a series of 1-lines? Not full sentences necessarily, but maybe just notes you'd jot on the back of something:

Retired -- trailer park -- bored ... bored outta my mind, actually.
Hubby's let himself go. [Sigh]. But ....
Detective? For a trailer park? Hmmmm... ? Excitement? Hmmmm... OK.
Real crime? Excitement! Danger? Hah! I scoff! And that reporter sure is good-looking ...

All of which leads to ... "a new world of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, love triangles, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more!"

Then fit whatever you come up (I'm sure you can do much better than the above) into your voice and see what happens?

Owen wrote: "Shannon wrote: "Thanks, Owen. You bring up a great point and I feel like my book is more fun to read than the description, so that is another thing I'll be working on. It's looking like this will b..."

Thanks, Owen. That's actually a great suggestion, especially since a lot of the comments have been to break the description up into more readable chunks. I've been reading other descriptions and I find the ones that have big chunks of text do lose my interest quicker than ones that have key points without too much detail.

Shannon wrote: "Owen wrote: "Shannon wrote: "Thanks, Owen. You bring up a great point and I feel like my book is more fun to read than the description, so that is another thing I'll be working on. It's looking lik..."

Happy you found it useful.

Best wishes!

G.T. wrote: "Shannon wrote: "Another writer in a writing group I'm in pointed out some issues he saw with my book description and while I agree with a lot of the points he made I'm unsure about some of them. I ..."

GT hits the nail on the head. Grip the potential reader with the intriguing and funny potential and let the reader find out in the book about the bored retiree and husband who's let himself go. You could start with 'What starts out...' or even 'Suzy Stillwater...'
Good luck
Mike

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I've come up with a very rough second draft. I'm still working on it and V.M. has been kind enough to help me through private messaging, but I thought I'd throw it up here and see what everyone thinks so far.

The dream of retiring in sunny paradise was the life raft Julie Jones clung to as she trudged her way through years of corporate crap. Instead of living the dream, which turned out to be an over fifty five mobile home park in Florida where the residents get excited when telemarketers call, she makes work for herself by solving local mysteries.

Once Julie gets a taste of being an amateur detective, she doesn't want to spend her time on trivial cases like helping Mr. Stiles figure out who told everyone he wears a toupee. She sees her chance to move up to the big time when Suzy Stillwater, a reclusive resident in her park, goes missing.

The overworked detectives assigned to the case don't have a clue what happened and would rather spend their time on more promising cases, but they don't want Julie poking her nose around in it either. They continually butt heads when Julie decides the chance to investigate a real crime is worth pissing off the police.

Julie won't rest until she solves the case and nothing could make her give up her new life full of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, sexy reporters, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more. Will she be able to figure out what happened to Suzy before she ends up in jail herself?

IMHO? . . . It's nice and tidy - but all the life, bounce, and personality went out the window.

M.L. wrote: "IMHO? . . . It's nice and tidy - but all the life, bounce, and personality went out the window."

Thanks for the feedback M.L. What does IMHO mean? I'm so out of date on my acronyms.

I've actually revised it a bit since that last version. It's not drastically different, but I thought I'd post it and see if the changes help it at all.

After years of trudging through corporate crap, Julie Jones couldn't wait to retire in the sunny paradise of an over fifty five mobile home park in Florida. Her excitement quickly turns to boredom when she discovers that her new home is slightly more fun than watching snails race. She decides to shake things up by solving local mysteries.

Once Julie gets a taste of being an amateur detective, she realizes she has the chops to solve bigger problems than helping Mr. Stiles figure out who told everyone he wears a toupee. She sees her chance to move up to the big time when Suzy Stillwater, a reclusive resident in her park, goes missing.

The overworked detectives assigned to the case don't have a clue what happened, but they don't want Julie poking her nose around in it either. When Julie decides that solving a real crime is worth pissing off the police, she finds herself in a lot more trouble than she bargained for.

Julie won't rest until she solves the case and nothing could make her give up her new life full of gnome theft, murder, naked criminals, sexy reporters, breaking and entering, high speed golf cart races, and more. Will she be able to figure out what happened to Suzy before she ends up in jail herself?

Shannon wrote: "M.L. wrote: "IMHO? . . . It's nice and tidy - but all the life, bounce, and personality went out the window."

Thanks for the feedback M.L. What does IMHO mean? I'm so out of date on my acronyms.
..."

Hi Shannon,
It's 'In My Humble Opinion'! :-) All the blurbs are nice, whichever one you use will work fine!

M.L. wrote: "Shannon wrote: "M.L. wrote: "IMHO? . . . It's nice and tidy - but all the life, bounce, and personality went out the window."

Thanks for the feedback M.L. What does IMHO mean? I'm so out of date o..."

Thanks, M.L. I never would have figured that one out.

I think the April 7th version is fine and conveys the quirky humour of the book.

A good book blurb needs to be short, snappy and teasing rather than telling, and if it can capture the writing sense of the book, that's even better.
Here's a link to the best short article I've seen about writing book blurbs. It's by Beth Bacon.
.http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/...
.

Charles wrote: "A good book blurb needs to be short, snappy and teasing rather than telling, and if it can capture the writing sense of the book, that's even better.
Here's a link to the best short article I've s..."

Thanks for the link to the article.

You're welcome. I found the article very helpful.