Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

In the last few days I have run into one of my big book buying pet peeves. The synopsis on the back of the book, or more importantly the lack of one. There seems to be a new trend going about that instead of a true synopsis you get a one sentence tease or just a bunch of blurbs from reviewers.

I encourage you authors to really think about the synopsis of the books that you put out there, whether on a paper book or on kindle. I have passed up a lot of books lately because of this, if I can't get a good idea of what the book is about then I am not going to throw my money out there and hope it is about something that interests me.

A good synopsis shouldn't give the entire book away but give a good idea of what type of book and what the basic topic is about.

I agree with you completely, Melissa. For me, writing a novel is so easy, but writing the synopsis is so difficult. Sometimes I'm in tears by the time I finish. I have had reviewers say that my synopsis doesn't do my books justice. I am still studying other author's synopsis and trying to improve mine. When I'm looking for a book to buy, I "open" the book on Amazon and start reading. It helps me see the author's style. If it grabs me during the sample, and the author is a good writer, then I buy it. Just about every author I know has trouble writing synopsis. I joined in many discussions about this on both Goodreads and LinkedIn.

I agree. I keep seeing ones that have a teaser excerpt. I automatically skip the book. Who wants to read a book when you don't know what it's about? Maybe authors think the cover lets you know the genre, and the plot will follow the genre formula, which is just sad. But the ones I've run into without synopses seem to be the formula type, from what I can tell.

I thought my description was great - then I had a friend reach out to me and tell me she had no idea what my book was about. Happily, she offered to spend three hours going through the entire plot of the book to come up with the description.

My personal problem was that my book had a lot of back story which I wasn't sure how much to put in and how much to leave out. Having the second set of eyes and mind was definitely helpful.

The other thing to note is that sometimes we're only given 1,000 characters to describe the book, depending on the distributor.

A blurb (on the back of a book or the distributor's website) and a synopsis (summary of the plot) are not exactly the same thing either. Your blurb should be sufficient to convey genre and theme, but it shouldn't give away the store. Keep something back for readers.

A synopsis, on the other hand, which is usually sent to a publisher as part of the submission process, should have the entire plot, just extremely condensed.

And yes, blurbs are hard. I hate writing them.

It is amazingly difficult -- easier if you can brainstorm it with a group.

As a reader I just normally straight away look on the "Look Inside"..but yeah writing synopsis and blurb could be tricky

I agree that synopsis' are a necessary evil for many readers and buyers, and if you're sending your manuscript to an agent, publisher or editor, the synopsis is required; and, it better be the very best the author can do. I know of some writers that pay big money for a professionally written synopsis.

Having said that, I personally don't put all that much stock in them. I agree with S. who wrote "as a reader I just normally straight away look on the "Look Inside..."

When I open the "look inside" feature or the actual book in a bookstore I'm after something that grabs me right away. If there are several pages of blocked-type, narrative descriptive...it's back on the shelf or one click gone.

In my opinion, a synopsis doesn't always give a true idea of the book's content, storyline or characters. As a tool of enticement, they are ofter overblown or exaggerated in order to capture a reader's attention. Really, the same way that all advertising is written and portrayed in all of its myriad venues.

I have trouble narrowing it down to a one line "pitch." I do a lot of festivals and I often only have about 5 seconds to sell my story. As writers, we like to think that our stories are too complicated to be condensed down into one sentence. :-) My husband's a writer, too, and if you ask him what his book's about he'll ramble on for five minutes. I finally came up with (for my newest book): It's a paranormal mystery about a woman who sees the past when she looks through her camera.

Obviously, there's more to the story than that. There's ghosts and murder and a little love story and a big mystery. Hopefully, though, that will interest the reader enough to check out the blurb and then from there buy the book.

Because so many authors I met had a real problem with making a pitch/blurb, I wrote a blog article on it, based on posts I made in this GR thread on blurbs.

Melissa wrote: "In the last few days I have run into one of my big book buying pet peeves. The synopsis on the back of the book, or more importantly the lack of one. There seems to be a new trend going about..."

I agree, and a synopsis should be more in depth than a blurb.