Metadata.

 

That is, blurbs and shit.

 

So it turns out that I forgot or I didn't think about until now the fact that books have blurbs, and eBooks are no exception. When I was formatting my book to give it a go on that there Kindle emulator thing (full details on formatting to follow, in a much better blog post than this one), I realised that I would have to enter all of this stuff in order to preview it. So I've started brainstorming.

 

I don't know if there are people who write blurbs as a job, but my mind tells me there must be. It's an art form, condensing the message of a 100,000 word book down into 5 lines of enticing summary, and it must take a certain sort of mind to perfect it. It has to be witty but not too playful, clever but accessible, cheesy but aware of its cheesiness, inviting but not too revealing. Authors don't write their own, surely? No, of course they don't. Don't be ridiculous. They're too close to the work. They'd be terrible at it.

 

But I have to, and so do you if you want to self-publish. So get to it. Here's my first attempt (with a clever play on words which I'm not sure comes across very well now I read it back):