Blurbing tip

Today, I’m working on my blurb. I made the mistake of telling my husband how intimidated I was at this prospect. You know — cooking down a whole story into some catchy hook in 250 words or less.

He said, “Just go in there and write a blurb today.”

Now he’s dead on the kitchen floor.* I don’t know exactly what happened, except maybe I now have bigger problems than blurbs. Possibly.

If you are like me and planning on writing a blurb TODAY, I do have a useful tip to pass along. Unfortunately, I can’t remember where it came from, but probably from either HM WARD or JA HUSS. It went like this:

*Most people skim the first and last paragraph of a blurb. They’re looking for the TROPES they enjoy. If they can easily identify their tropes, they’ll go back and read the whole blurb.*

Which? That’s totally what I do when I’m looking for a book to read, right? It’s almost like I’m looking for some subliminal key word to tell me if actually reading two paragraphs is worth my time.

So make sure you know what your tropes are, and put keywords indicating that trope in your blurb.

What’s a trope? Here you go.

This advice helped get me away from my navel-gazing, “How do I smoosh this complicated book down to a few paragraphs?” and into the place of, “How do I catch the attention of readers who will like this story?”

Which brings up another point I hadn’t considered when first blurbing: You want to draw in all the readers who like the kind of book you’re writing, while deflecting people who don’t like the kind of book you’re writing.

Which totally makes sense. One person’s sexy is another person’s throw-the-book-and-go-brush-your-teeth style dislike. No judgment. But a good idea to clearly tell readers what to expect so you don’t accidentally get a bunch of people loathing your book in specific, detailed reviews, amirite?

With DarkWeb, I think I’m trying to grab an audience that likes:

-Love triangles, taboo style since it’s brothers.
-Psychological thrillers
-flawed heroines/unreliable narrators

Any other bits of wisdom about blurb writing? Hit me up with knowledge!

ETA: My best guess is that I got these tips, at least in part, from JA Huss’s super interesting free marketing course, which you can find here:

Free Marketing Course

*(Kidding! He magically resurrected after I screamed a couple curse words. Although it should be noted he has no further commentary on blurb writing.)

When you need someone to look at a contract, but you don’t have an agent

Today’s shout-out goes to Authors Guild!!!

Recently, someone offered to buy some of the rights for DARKWEB. In all the excitement, the most burning point of freak out was that I didn’t know where to find someone with the expertise to help.

A small snippet of my anxiety spiral: Hire a lawyer? If so, how did I find one that specialized in this area? What if the lawyer cost more than the advance I was offered? Agents know contracts! Should I contact a handful of agents to see if they’d negotiate on my behalf? What if they they take me because ‘free money’ but were otherwise not a great fit? What if they won’t even take me because it’s not enough money to be worth their time?

Fortunately, I have sane friends. They recommended Authors Guild.

For the price of membership, you can access Authors Guild’s lawyers, who will look at contracts and tell you what they think.

I signed up, and a lawyer emailed me within 5 business days. They were tremendously helpful. I felt like I had someone on my side, who understood what was going on.

When the lawyer had answered all my many questions, I had a clearer grasp of the pros and cons, and felt confident in the decision to pass on signing. AHAHAHA, EMPOWERMENT. Anyway, AG. Definitely worth the price of membership, even if I never use any of their other services.

Turning youtube audio into a podcast, so you can multitask like a badass

I’m an Ivory Tower kinda girl, meaning I love to research the shit outa stuff I’m interested in. For self-publishing, this often means watching/listening to tons of youtube videos and lectures.

As I’m sure you might guess, this can get boring AF, and I’ve already spent many hours ‘educating myself’ while playing Tetris on another browser until my fingers cramped into a monkey’s paw type situation. Pretty much a throwback to my entire education. Holla, grad school!

My husband recommended playing videos at 1.25 speed, which you can do under the flower shaped button in the bottom right of most videos.

But I gotta tell you, you’re then trapped, playing Tetris, with someone who sounds totally coked out of their mind AND SUPER PSYCHED ABOUT THE MINUTIA OF SELF PUBLISHING.

Another option I’ve recently discovered are programs such as this one,
which convert youtube audio to a podcast format you can play on mp3 player.

I’ve converted exactly one youtube lecture with this link, and it worked. Although, when I came back to my browser, there was a full page ad from Ashley Madison. So be sure to give your spouse the heads up before you get yourself in some marital hot water.

Anyway, you are probably a bad-assed multi-tasker like myself, and enjoy plotting your eventual brand take-over while you go out jogging, or as you heroically mop the floor. If so, this might help you out.