How to write a book description that makes people open the book

After the cover, the description is the second thing a reader looks at, and it is usually where they decide whether to open the book. It is also the hardest hundred words most authors ever write, because it means reducing years of work to a paragraph. This guide gives you a method that works for most books.

A description is not a summary

The most common mistake is to retell the plot. A summary answers “what happens?”. A description answers “why would I want to read this?”. It only needs to cover the opening situation, and it should stop before the middle of the book. If your description mentions anything from the last third of the story, cut it.

The three questions

For fiction, almost every good description answers three questions in order:

Who is it about? One person, named, with one detail that makes them particular.
What do they want, or what happens to them? The event that starts the story.
What stands in the way? The difficulty, the danger or the choice.

Here is that pattern applied to a book you may know: “Jim Hawkins is an innkeeper’s son who finds a treasure map in a dead sailor’s chest. He sails for the Caribbean as cabin boy on the ship sent to dig it up. Then he overhears the crew, and learns that most of them are pirates.” Three sentences, about fifty words, and nothing from beyond the first third of Treasure Island.

Start with a person, not a theme

“A powerful story of love, loss and redemption” could describe ten thousand novels, so it describes none of them. Readers connect with people in trouble. Compare “a meditation on class and marriage in Regency England” with “Elizabeth Bennet has four sisters, no fortune and a mother set on marrying them all off.” The second tells you about class and marriage too, but it gives you someone to follow.

Be specific

Specific details are what make a description sound like your book and nobody else’s. Not “a mysterious object” but “a photograph the King of Bohemia needs back before his wedding.” Not “a remote location” but “a lighthouse with a locked room.” If you can swap a phrase into another book’s description without anyone noticing, replace it.

Non-fiction works differently

For non-fiction the three questions become: who is this for, what problem does it solve, and why should they trust you? Say what the reader will be able to do after reading. “Seventy recipes from the Konkan coast that can each be cooked in under forty minutes with a pressure cooker and one pan” tells a reader more than any amount of praise for the cuisine. One sentence about your experience is enough.

Things to leave out

Praise for your own book. “Gripping”, “unputdownable” and “a must-read” are judgements for readers to make. They are not evidence.
Rhetorical questions. “Will she find the truth before it is too late?” The answer is always yes, and readers know it.
The ending, and any twist.
A list of characters. Two names are plenty. Three is the limit.
How long it took you to write. Readers care about their own time, not yours.

Length and layout

On 360book the description can be up to 800 characters, and the first few lines are what show beside the 3D book. Aim for 60 to 120 words and put the strongest sentence first. Short sentences read better on a phone. If your book is a preview of a longer work, it helps to end with one plain line saying what the preview contains, such as “This preview covers the first two chapters.”

A template to start from

Fill in the blanks, then rewrite it in your own voice:

[Name] is a [specific detail] who [wants something / has just had something happen]. When [the event that starts the story], [he/she/they] must [do something difficult]. But [the obstacle], and [what will be lost if they fail].

Test it on someone

Read the description aloud to a person who has not read the book and ask them to tell you what the book is about. If they can, and if they ask what happens next, it is working. If they repeat a theme back to you instead of a situation, go back to the three questions.

Once the description is done, see how many pages your preview should show.