Back Cover Copy

The words you place on the back cover of your book are the words that will either walk your book right up to the cash register or march it back to the shelves. Your back cover is the final billboard, a point-of-sale advertisement, and the last piece of promotional material that hits potential purchasers on their way to pay. It can either lure readers inside your pages with well-chosen words or knock the wind out of your sales with faint and feebly-phrased copy. Your back cover is an invitation for readers to purchase and wasting that space on anything else won’t ensure you any immediate RSVP’s.

This is not the place to put a book report. The back cover is really not the spot for the story of your life (except for maybe a brief biography with a couple of sentences that capture the essence of you), unless your life story is so compelling that it’s the basis for your book. You have your dedication page to thank your family members for tolerating your mood swings; cover space is not the place for it. Back cover is not the spot for a picture of your pet or for you to list your hobbies (unless this is a book about them). Nor is it an arena to qualify your sources, quash your critics, or question your intentions. Wasting that precious space on anything other than carefully-chosen sales copy is like flailing at the air. You might land a couple of punches, but you’re not going to score a knockout.

Back cover copy should be an open invitation to the reader to cross the threshold of a book. It should beckon the reader, tempting him with choice tidbits that hold the promise of the banquet within its covers, wafting the essence of what’s within and making the reader hungry for what’s being served up inside. It should be provocative and engaging enough to hook a reader’s interest, yet not give away so much of the contents so that the bait is gone in just one bite. It should be enough of a tease about what’s inside to force readers to get out their wallets and buy a ticket to see the rest of the show.

Authors often submit synopses when it’s time to develop their back cover copy. No!

Yes, you do want to give a tiny preview of what’s inside, a reader should get an idea of what to expect, but please save the Cliff Notes versions for the Ingram listings. Instead, take a lesson from the internet search engine marketers. Good back cover copy should include significant details that may incidentally appeal to your audience and make the difference between sealing the deal and sending your book back to sit on the shelf.

Giving details about your book without giving away the story synopsis-style should be your goal. Who-what-where-when is a good journalistic formula when used sparingly, but it should only hint at what’s inside. The protagonist is a professor? Academics will identify. The plot involves scuba-diving? There is an ocean of enthusiasts who may jump on board. Your hero comes from Brooklyn? Brooklyn people like reading stories set in their own backyard. Don’t neglect to say whether it is mystery or memoir, fiction or fact. Just save the blow-by-blows of your book for inside its pages and use the back cover to get the reader primed and psyched for what’s inside.