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A Tip for Authors: What to Put on the Back Cover of a Book



If you have accomplished the arduous task of writing a book, you may not embrace the job of choosing what to put on your book's back cover. Maybe you think that a short biography, along with a few endorsements should suffice. Actually the material on the back cover can carry out its intended job, without the presence of a two or three line bio.
It does pay to highlight any endorsements you have received from experts within the industry, or from recognized members of government or society. Still, you may not have on file an endorsement that can stir up the emotions in a potential reader. Yet you have little reason to hope that the reader of the rear covering piece will elect to look at the pages between the covers, if you fail to trigger that same person's emotions.
With that fact in mind, you must consider what emotions might push a book lover to purchase the publication that bears your name. Maybe that potential reader feels challenged by a problem. Confidence that your book offers a solution would motivate that same person to reach for a wallet or a credit card.
Perhaps that book lover/possible buyer wants to take home something that can offer relief from everyday trials. If you can prove that your book promises to get any reader laughing, then you have satisfied one emotion-filled desire. Alternately, you might succeed in convincing a dejected or confused bibliophile of your book's ability to inject a sense of purpose into his or her life.
Of course, emotions tend to stay bottled up in an individual, until some event or comment causes them to come out in the open. In the same way, the emotion-triggering ability of what you have written will remain hidden, until you can give it a voice. Use your back cover to provide it with that voice.
Make sure that your voice acts as a motivating force. In other words, it should motivate performance of a particular action. Furthermore, it needs to link performance of that action with the reader's acquisition of some benefit.
While that suggestion appears at the end of this article, it ought to direct an author's choice of all the material that fills the rear covering piece. Ideally, a distinct voice emerges in the back cover's headline. An author can ensure the realization of such an emergence by starting that headline with an action verb.  https://www.rfp-templates.com/Research-Articles/List-of-Action-Verbs
 
Authors pay attention. Do not waste your time. Start thinking up some action verbs that match with your book's message. Include one or more of them in a headline, and begin working on your back cover. 


 BIO: Sue Chehrenegar became interested in book promotion after a story she had written was included in an anthology. A good back cover helps to enhance a promotional effort. Sue has written this guest blog post as a way to help other authors.
 

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