How Great Amazon Book Descriptions Help Indie Authors Sell More Books

by Penny Sansevieri, @bookgal

The following is an excerpt from Penny Sansevieri’s newly released book, How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon – 2020 Updated Edition! Learn how to turn Amazon into your 24/7 sales machine!  

Whether we’re talking about Amazon, or any other e-tailer, book descriptions are more important than most authors realize.

Too many times I’ll see blocks of text pulled from the back of the book. In theory, it’s not the worst idea. However, it may not be the greatest idea if your book description isn’t strong to begin with, or if the book details are just slapped up on Amazon—or Barnes & Noble, iTunes and so on—without giving an eye to things like spacing, bulleting, shorter paragraphs, and boldface.

In this section we’ll discuss some ideas about book descriptions specifically, and then review some tips you may want to consider in order to enhance your own book description for maximum effectiveness on Amazon.

Is Your Book Description Memorable Whether It’s Scanned or Read Word-for-Word?

Most people don’t read websites; they scan. The same is true for your book description. If you have huge blocks of text without any consideration for spacing, boldface, bulleted lists, short paragraphs, or some other form of highlighting that helps the reader scan, it’s unlikely to attract readers. When your description is visually and psychologically appealing, it invites the reader to delve in instead of click off.

Book design, meaning the actual font on the pages, adopts this strategy, too. By having wide margins (referred to as gutters in the book design world) and spacing, and, in nonfiction, bulleted lists and even boxed-in pieces to highlight particular text, you invite the reader to read instead of doing a quick scan and rushing on.

Our minds are image processors, not text processors, so huge pieces of text that fill a page overwhelm the mind and, in fact, slow down the processing time considerably.

When we’re looking at websites, our attention span is even shorter than it is while reading a book. Even sites like Amazon—where consumers go to buy, and often spend a lot of time comparing products and reading reviews—it’s important to keep in mind that most potential readers will move on if your description is too cumbersome.

How can you make your description more scan-friendly?

• Headlines: The first sentence in the description should be a grabber, something that pulls the reader in. This text could also be an enthusiastic review quote or some other kind of endorsement, but regardless, it should be bolded. In the case of your Amazon book page, you could also use the “Amazon Orange” to set your headline apart from the rest of the text.
• Paragraphs: Keep paragraphs short at 2-3 sentences max.
• Bolding: You can boldface key text throughout the description. In fact, I recommend it. Just be sure you aren’t using boldface too much. Don’t highlight two or three sentences in bold, because it’ll have more impact if you do just one sentence or a few keyword strings.
• Bullets or Numbers: If your book is nonfiction, it can be very effective to bullet or number as much of your information as possible. Take key points and the “here’s what you’ll learn” elements and put them into a bullet point/numbering section that’s easy to scan and visually appealing.

Use Code to Enhance Your Amazon Book Description and Headline

How do you spruce up the text styles within your book description? There are several types of code you can use to enhance your headline and description. Keep in mind that you can’t make these changes to your headline via Author Central; it all has to be done from the KDP Dashboard. Although this won’t affect your algorithm per se, it will help make your book description more visually appealing.

Here are some of the coding enhancers available:

• Bolding: <b>The text you want bolded</b>
• Italics: <i>The text you want italicized</i>
• Headline: <h1>The text you want for a headline</h1>
• Amazon Orange Headline: <h2>The text you want for a headline in Amazon Orange</h2>

You can add in numbered lists and bullet points, too.

Answering Readers’ Most Important Question: “What’s in It for Me?”

The biggest challenge authors face is writing a book description that effectively highlights the book’s benefits for readers. This matters whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, and it’s a crucial part of any book description.

Remember, with 4,500 books published every day in this country, you can’t afford to have a vague, meandering book description. You must state clearly why your book is the best one they can buy.

This leads us to the differences between fiction and nonfiction when it comes to book descriptions.

Nonfiction

First off, it’s probably very likely that whomever you’re targeting already owns a few titles similar to the one you just wrote. Then why on earth should they add yours to their collection?

While you’re powering through your book description, keep in mind that you’re likely serving a very cluttered market. You need to be precise and vividly clear about why your book matters. You should hook the reader from the first sentence, and remember to make a personal connection with the reader via the book description.

Nonfiction shoppers are more often than not looking for the solution to a problem. They’re not browsing for their next beach read. So your book description needs to zero in on what that problem likely is, plus they need to feel like you understand them, and they need to be convinced you’re the best person to help them work through it.

And if you’re a noted expert in your field, with accolades to back it up, work those in briefly, because in this day and age it truly does set you apart. So do reviews by other experts in your field or industry, but keep them short and sweet—excerpts of the best parts are plenty. Save your full bio and complete reviews for the other sections Amazon gives you.

Fiction

Fiction is a bit tougher, because it’s easy to reveal too much, or not quite enough. For this reason, I encourage you to focus on developing your elevator pitch (see below), because that’s going to be your cliffhanger, or your readers’ key interest point in the book. Every other piece of the story anchors to that.

When it comes to fiction, buyers have a lot of options, so be clear about what your book is about, and lead with the hook. Your opening sentence should be the best you’ve got—because it might be the only chance you get. And don’t confuse not giving it all away with being vague. If you’re vague, the potential reader won’t experience the emotional connection they need in order to make them want to find out more. So give them a story arc to latch onto and leave them needing more.

Keep movie trailers in mind while you’re writing your fiction description. They often do an outstanding job of giving enough of the story to get you hooked without revealing so much it prevents you from watching it.

Book descriptions, whether on Amazon, iTunes, or Barnes & Noble, are your sales pitch. Ultimately, descriptions will or won’t sell your book, so make sure yours is tightly written, exceptionally engaging, and most of all, turns a browse into a buy.

Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU. She was named one of the top influencers of 2019 by New York Metropolitan Magazine.

Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Amazon Optimization programs as well as Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. She is the author of eighteen books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon, Revise and Re-Release Your Book, 5-Minute Book Marketing for Authors, and Red Hot Internet Publicity, which has been called the “leading guide to everything Internet.” 

AME has had dozens of books top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.

To learn more about Penny’s books or her promotional services, you can visit her web site at www.amarketingexpert.com.