What is a Blurb?

This term our class have been busily working on our narrative books so that we can enter into the Mayoral Make-A-Book Competition. This week we looked at writing a blurb to match our story.

What is a blurb?

A blurb is a short summary or description of  a book. The blurb does not tell the story: it tells the potential buyer or reader about the story

As a class we discussed why most authors include blurbs at the back of their books.

What is the purpose of a blurb?

A blurb is a great way to promote a book and make a person want to read or even buy it. Without a blurb it can be very hard to find out what a particular book is about without having to read the entire story.

book

We decided that a blurb is very important part of a book. Like the front cover it needs to capture a readers interest and make people want to read the book you have written. For our class we want to capture the judges interest for the Mayoral Make-A-Book competition so a well written blurb is something we decided we wanted to include on the back cover of our books.

Next we discussed what a well written blurb looks like. We looked at a few examples from different books that we have read before. We noticed that some blurbs were a lot longer than others and each had similar writing techniques to draw the reader into reading their book.

Techniques of writing a good blurb…

  • Keeping it short and sweet. You need to draw the reader in quickly and hold their attention. Use key words like ‘secret’, ‘mystery’, ‘betrayal’, ‘revenge’, ‘magic’ to whet a reader’s appetite
  • You don’t need to describe the whole plot in the blurb, just give the reader an idea of who the main character or characters are and the main problem they will face in the story. Keep your blurb simple yet interesting.
  • The blurb should be written in a similar voice to the book. If it’s a comedy, the blurb needs to reflect this.
  • Adding a question in the blurb gets the reading thinking and wondering about your story which may lead to them wanting to find out the answer to your question by reading the book.

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Once we did a first draft of our blurbs in our writing books we then edited them and have now begun writing our good copy on a piece of paper that will be the back cover of our books.

Below are some of our blurbs we have written.

 blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb blurb

Why do you think a blurb is important?

Can you explain one technique or a word you used in your blurb that you think will capture the judges interest?

Is there a blurb from a book that you have read that caught your interest? If so can you type it in your comment.

10 thoughts on “What is a Blurb?

  1. Dear Mrs Baldwin

    I think a blurb is importent because it is telling you about the book but not the end of the book.

    From Lachie

  2. Dear Mrs Baldwin,

    I think a blurb is important because if you do not have one how will they know what the book is about? How will it interest them if they do not know what its about as well?
    I think that it make you want to read it more.

    From Asha

  3. Dear Mrs Baldwin, i think blurbs are important because if you like the title page you normally go to the blurb to see if it interests you.

    A word i wish i’d used was well mesmerising.
    From Megan

  4. Dear Mrs Baldwin, I think a blurb is something that encourages someone to read the book and give them an idea about the book.
    From Fate

  5. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    A technique I used was using a question at the end of my blurb and it was is this a coincidence or not?

    A blurb is a important because it can explain several things like the characters names, whats the problem and can they do it or not? Thats what brings you in to think this seems interesting and I wonder what going happen.

    I myself don’t generally read the blurb because look at front cover.

    From Anika

  6. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    I think blurbs are important because it makes people want to read the book and normally make people get interested in reading the book. Sometimes the author just writes bits from the start of the book so the reader wants to know the ending.
    From Gracie

  7. Dear Mrs Baldwin,
    I think that it is important to have a question in
    the blurb . A blurb is important because it draws
    people to the book.
    From Josh

  8. Dear Mrs Baldwin

    I think a blurb is important because it draws the readers attention without giving away the story.

    A technique I used to capture people’s attention was using a question because that gives them an answer in their head and they read the book to find out if their answer is correct.

    From Brodie 😋

  9. Dear Mrs Baldwin,

    I think a blurb is important because if someone reads a blurb and the blurb is interesting they will probable take it and read it.

    I think some techniques that you should use in a blurb to make it a good blurb are, using a question and introducing the problem.

    From Noah

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