I was recently asked by a friend* to look over the blurb for her forthcoming book release, and a few thoughts suddenly struck me. Well, maybe not suddenly. If I’m honest, I sat down to look at this, and several thoughts became a sort of natural consequence of the sitting down and looking, so when you think about it, there’s nothing sudden about that at all. But I digress.

The above is a perfect example of what a blurb shouldn’t do. Going off on a tangent, and then over-explaining it. A lot of blurbs-in-progress tend to say too much about things which aren’t sexy. This might sound odd, but think about it. Some points in a synopsis might be essential to the story (or beloved by the author), but they do nothing to incentivise a reader to pick up your book. And above everything, you want people to pick up your…