What's the ideal length for a blurb?

[Adrian Bagley]

I've seen "expert" advice that a pitch/blurb should be 2-3 sentences long and "expert" advice that it should be 2-3 paragraphs long. Those are two very different things! Add in successful query letters posted online that went on and on and on with comments from the happy agent gushing about how anyone would love to get a pitch like this and... it's confusing as anything.

Is there a difference between the UK and the US maybe?

Is there even an ideal length, or is it more about using the minimal number of words possible to do justice to your novel?

 

[Vagabond Heart]

I think there is a quite a big difference between the UK and US in terms of how you approach agents/publishers, and what they want from you.
Plus, a pitch and a blurb are different things too. A pitch is you selling the 'idea' of your story (eg., best and most succinct pitch, ever, was for Aliens, which was 'Jaws in space'). But a blurb is the bit that will sit on the back of your book, or come after your title on platforms like Amazon, to sell your book to the reader.
For a UK agent, a blurb is a very good thing to include in your first-approach cover letter, as it gives the intern reading your submission something easy to 'sell on' to the next layer up in the chain. We also include comps, and interesting or relevant personal information.
For a US agent, I believe the approach is different - and what they want is closer to a several paragraph mini synopsis of your book. And they don't want personal stuff in the initial letter.
Anyway, that's what I have surmised from being in Litopia for a couple of years. Others may know different?
(And I'd advise you most whole-heartedly to pay the small bit of cash to watch Pete's Seminar on 'Writing Killer Blurbs').

 

[MattScho]

I've seen "expert" advice that a pitch/blurb should be 2-3 sentences long and "expert" advice that it should be 2-3 paragraphs long. Those are two very different things! Add in successful query letters posted online that went on and on and on with comments from the happy agent gushing about how anyone would love to get a pitch like this and... it's confusing as anything.

Is there a difference between the UK and the US maybe?

Is there even an ideal length, or is it more about using the minimal number of words possible to do justice to your novel?

Pete has a video on the site about this. But the short version is that an Amazon and other online sellers give you about 50 words before "click for more" on the blurb, and a lot of readers, when they're browsing, won't click for more. So ideal, for that purpose, is under 50 words.

 

[Adrian Bagley]

I think there is a quite a big difference between the UK and US in terms of how you approach agents/publishers, and what they want from you.

That vm explains the contradictory info out there. It's funny, for all the research I've done on this, that's the one vital detail that never came up!

 

[Adrian Bagley]

Pete has a video on the site about this. But the short version is that an Amazon and other online sellers give you about 50 words before "click for more" on the blurb, and a lot of readers, when they're browsing, won't click for more. So ideal, for that purpose, is under 50 words.

Ouch, that is short...

 

[RK Wallis]

I agree with @Vagabond Heart and @MattScho. Very different! Which are you aiming for?

I have a UK version and US version...

 

[Adrian Bagley]

I agree with @Vagabond Heart and @MattScho. Very different! Which are you aiming for?

I have a UK version and US version...

UK at this stage, though I'm not ruling out the US in future.

 

[CarolMS]

I've seen "expert" advice that a pitch/blurb should be 2-3 sentences long and "expert" advice that it should be 2-3 paragraphs long. Those are two very different things! Add in successful query letters posted online that went on and on and on with comments from the happy agent gushing about how anyone would love to get a pitch like this and... it's confusing as anything.

Is there a difference between the UK and the US maybe?

Is there even an ideal length, or is it more about using the minimal number of words possible to do justice to your novel?

As some others have pointed out, there is a difference in the approach between the UK and US. And as to word count, when assessing the optimal number of words before the "Read More" break on Amazon's US site for books, I researched it by doing a copy and paste of a variety of blurb intros, pasting the words used to the break on a separate Word page so as to assess the word count, and found that they ranged from 45 to 75 words. The format on the US Amazon site is most commonly a total of three to five lines (again, up to the break), including one space/break line between paragraphs. I have the impression the UK Amazon site often includes testimonial quotes above the break, limiting the blurb word counts, while such quotes tend to appear further down on the US Amazon site. Regarding that "Read More" aspect, I have to admit I am someone who nearly ALWAYS clicks on it to read more, so personally, I've never been bothered by blurbs being longer. But I seem to be the odd one out on that score. So in the US, I guess 70 or so words is the maximum for blurb impact, and according to Agent Pete, 50 is recommended for the UK.

 

[Nikky Lee]

On a slight tangent, when I share other authors' books in my newsletter, the ones with shorter blurbs always get more clicks/interest. Unsurprisingly, the cover also plays a major role, but I've shared books with amazing covers but with long 3-4 paragraph blurbs and people just skim straight over it.

 

[JohnBertel]

Amazon and other online sellers give you about 50 words before "click for more" on the blurb, and a lot of readers, when they're browsing, won't click for more.

Sorry for repeating this, but while I as a book buyer, love short blurbs and it is important what appears above 'read more' I do believe the 50 words' rule of thumb is a bit too simplified.

First, the number of words is a very unreliable measure of how much space you take up on the page. It is actually quite easy to see how your blurb will appear on Amazon. Find a book, save the HTML file and substitute the blurb with your own (I think I made a post long ago with more details).

Related to that, we see writers wanting to keep under a word count use more or less disjointed sentences and then place them on separate lines so it reads better, but those linebreaks actually eat up space!

Also, the 'read more' is (at this time) only on the laptop version of Amazon while the whole text is displayed on the mobile website.

Regarding the notion that people will not click 'read more' and the related that 'people only spend x seconds before deciding to buy', I haven't been able to find those surveys. But I think it's safe to assume that it is an average and that there are big variations between books that are discarded and books that are bought. In the first case, it wouldn't take many seconds to, for instance, see on the bigger version of the cover that it is not the kind of book you are looking for, the ratings are too low, or the first few words in the blurb puts you off. But if everything you have seen so far makes you interested but you still aren't quite sure if you want to spend money and time on this book then you can't be bothered to click 'read more'? Really?

 

[MattScho]

Sorry for repeating this, but while I as a book buyer, love short blurbs and it is important what appears above 'read more' I do believe the 50 words' rule of thumb is a bit too simplified.

First, the number of words is a very unreliable measure of how much space you take up on the page. It is actually quite easy to see how your blurb will appear on Amazon. Find a book, save the HTML file and substitute the blurb with your own (I think I made a post long ago with more details).

Related to that, we see writers wanting to keep under a word count use more or less disjointed sentences and then place them on separate lines so it reads better, but those linebreaks actually eat up space!

Also, the 'read more' is (at this time) only on the laptop version of Amazon while the whole text is displayed on the mobile website.

Regarding the notion that people will not click 'read more' and the related that 'people only spend x seconds before deciding to buy', I haven't been able to find those surveys. But I think it's safe to assume that it is an average and that there are big variations between books that are discarded and books that are bought. In the first case, it wouldn't take many seconds to, for instance, see on the bigger version of the cover that it is not the kind of book you are looking for, the ratings are too low, or the first few words in the blurb puts you off. But if everything you have seen so far makes you interested but you still aren't quite sure if you want to spend money and time on this book then you can't be bothered to click 'read more'? Really?

It's actually not that different. We used word count all the time in journalism, in determining where a story would fit. Back in the newspaper days, this mattered. The type size was what it always was. The space available in a newspaper was determined by the number of ads in an edition. The space was exact, and esp before pagination, we knew that through word count.
The average word is considered to be 5 words, so 50 words is 250 characters. A blurb might be off by a bit in one direction or the other, but that's the standard.
I can't bring up click for more numbers, but click-through numbers on other things are pretty abysmal. Shockingly bad. On twitter they were under 1 percent not that long ago. No idea if that changed in the last couple years, but don't see why they would have.
Now, this does not mean people won't buy a book with a longer blurb, but it does say that it's in your best interest to create interest in the very beginning, at least create enough interest quickly to convince someone to click for more, and never to assume someone will click for more if they aren't interested from word one.
The average time spent reading any particular page on a web-site is around 15 seconds. This takes everything into account, including things on which readers spent a lot of time. There is a lot of evidence that you get a couple seconds to hook someone online.

 

[JohnBertel]

I don't think anybody would disagree that you need to catch users' attention quickly on the internet. I'm just still not convinced that this translates to keeping the blurb to 50 words. I'm sure that in other contexts and larger texts, the word count can be a good indicator of size on a page, but with this limited space on Amazon, I don't why one would use word count.

 

[Pamela Jo]

Minimal number of words esp for a query. The video RK Wallis just posted says you can establish a story in 5 words and that is basically all you get for a reader to decide to drop it or go on. That reader in the case of a query letter will probably be an intern or an agent who's already gone through 100 queries that morning. Slush piles are real. Agents sluice for a tiny nugget of gold in a raging stream of submissions. They know the market. In the back of their mind they are already arguing with a tableful of publishers as to why this book will make money for everyone.
That's why dont wear your talent on your sleeve. A rejection doesnt mean that you are a bad writer. Just that whoever read that first 5 words couldn't see a way to make money on it.
So some agents have found moneymakers thru a catchy 2 line elevator pitch at the top of a page. You know that could work. But for a query most agents want a synopsis not a blurb. A blurb is more to sell to the reader, the back of the book. A synopsis gives the agent what he needs to see the story and decide whether it is marketable. Reverse engineer the problem and you can understand the differences. This isn't school where doing it "right" gets you the top of the class. There are no "experts" with a formula to success.
This is business. You get a contract by convincing an agent your book will make them money. First you have to get the agents attention. They have the attention span of a toddler who just drank a flask of cold coffee. Knowing that write your query with creativity giving them what they need to bet on you. Dont tell them you are a moneymaker. Show them.