Thursday 12 April 2018

Blurbs - the professional way


Further advice on blurb writing - gleaned from various sources: 

Guessing what will work with your readers might do the trick, but actual data might be better. There are various ways and means of accessing data.

Services like Manybooks allow you to test two different descriptions for your book to see which one gets the most downloads. Or you could send different version of your blurb to reviewers and see which version gets you the most responses. Though why reviewers would be bothered to do this beats me.

 Create a poll on your blog or website and ask people to tell you which version they prefer. That might get better results and might be something I would try.

Run Facebook ads simultaneously with different “pick-up lines” in your ad description  and see which ones get the most clicks - though I have doubts about this. Surely the first option will get the most responses? I wouldn't click on five versions of the same thing, and I don't think many people would.
 Providers like Constant ContactGetResponse or AWeber will send your proposed blurbs to your subscribers to see which they prefer. Seems to me that I could set up an e-mail people would click without going to a company which no doubt will charge for doing this for you.

Most of this sounds like something I would not do, but I would send a blurb to a group in which I participate and ask for comments. Usually, the comments all seem to cancel each other out initially, but there is often a clear "winner" and that's the one I would go for.

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