One More Time For The Book Descriptions

Hi Don,

Your opening anecdote is WAY too long. You should have at most one paragraph of windup and then the next paragraph needs to nail down the focus of your book in explicit terms. Not only is this structure of getting to the main point in the second paragraph a classic structure for magazine article writing (look up "nut graph" to learn more), it fits the psychology of how people read book descriptions - impatiently.

The other problem is that your book subtitle makes a very bold claim: "Unlimited Happiness." I don't see anything in your book description that makes the "unlimited" part of this claim credible.

The bullet points are well done.

Good luck with your book.

Marcia Yudkin

Effective, persuasive.

Comes across (to me) a bit like pop psychology though.

Alex

I agree that it's way too long without and without something to grab the reader's attention. I had to go down to the bullet points to find something truly compelling. Here it is:

How to feel good, and more confident about yourself quickly, anytime.

Here's how I'd open this...

If you're looking for a way to feel good and project an aura of confidence when it counts, then you won't want to miss... then name the book and author. Build from there. Explain a bit about the process to realize more confidence quickly. People LOVE quick fixes.

Then tell the reader a little bit about what happened to you, what you did to change it, and how things are now, all the while working the benefits of the book into your little story.

You mentioned studying the top nonfiction book descriptions. I think you'd be far better served by looking at the top fiction blurbs. Some of the most effective copy, regardless of the topic, comes from true to life stories (in this case, stories of transformation the reader will relate to, especially when you explain, in broad terms, the various strategies in the book). Good luck.

Thank you.

(The following is not a book description.)

From the very beginning modern psychology, psychologists spent their time studying mental illness - schizophrenia, bipolar and unipolar disorders, OCD, ADHD - and the list goes on.

About twenty-five years ago, Martin Seligman, a professor from Pennsylvania, began to study, and search for whatever it was happy people did to become and remain happy. Then other scientists started testing his premises to try to prove what actions caused happiness. The studies are fascinating, and I go over several of them in "Happy Mind Happy Life."

Twenty-four years ago I heard the comment from a friend, the comment that gave me an epiphany, and I started using the idea. Over the years I've learned a half-dozen additional strategies for happiness, which when combined with the first one, have been life-changing (okay happiness-changing) for me, and for friends to whom I've taught the strategies.

Before writing the book, I spent almost 5 months going through research material the psychologists created. I managed to find manyof their research papers and articles online, and much to my surprise, the very same techniques the scientists proved cause happiness, were the same ones I have been using.

Just as a side-note, it happens that many of the 12-step self-help groups (AA, OA, NA, GA, ICYPAA, CA, SA, SALAA) teach these same techniques, but not in their literature. They teach these strategies to each other through their meetings.

So now it's back to the blackboard for me to rewrite the book's description. Oh wait, I'm using a keyboard, not a blackboard. What was I thinking? And besides that, my computer loves me. It's happy too.

:-Don

Don,

According to renowned usability expert Jakob Nielsen, only 32% of web visitors even look at the fourth paragraph of content on a typical page. (Look at! That's not the same as reading.)

Website Reading: It (Sometimes) Does Happen

Another reason to get to the point quickly.

Marcia Yudkin

Thanks Loren,

I find it interesting that Gordon Burgett's opt-inform on his main squeeze page does not have a submit button. Inside his site is a page with links archived newsletters, and there is an opt-in box there with a submit button.

When I try to sign up, and hit submit, loud music starts playing, and Norton's virus protection blocks the site, and said it stopped a virus attack from: "Mass Injection Website 5."

Maybe Gordon's site has been hacked.

Oh, he is going to show me how not to write a book. This ought to be fun. ;-)

He does have quite a number of books in publication, sold on Amazon. Some of his books either have no book description, or a very short one. Then others have lengthy, well written descriptions.

I looked at each of his books, and their sales ranking in Amazon. His are mostly in the 500,000 to 1,000,000 range. The non-fiction books I was looking at in Amazon's bestseller list, all were below 9,000 in sales rank, yet had terrible descriptions, sometime only 1 or 2 sentences!

Okay, it's time to go blow off my beginning paragraphs, and make my bullets more specific.

Thanks again.

:-Don

Thanks Marcia, for the link to Nielsen's site.

"...nanocontent issues, such as how to cram maximal information into the first two words of headlines and links."

First two words! Yikes.

Actually I picked the book title only after asking opinions in the Kindle Club subforum, asking my Facebook friends, and setting up a survey in Survey Monkey, then sending my lists there. A friend also sent a message to his list asking them to mark their favorite title at the Survey Monkey site.

Happy Mind Happy Life was the clear winner, but these people were not voting with their wallets. My original title, "Get Happy Fast" scored poorly. Go figure! It has more punch.

Maybe that should be the opening line of the book description.

Thanks again,

:-Don

Well, he's a print guy. I have some of his books. He
probably doesn't know anything about websites and
it looks like he's been struggling with health problems
in the last year.

Here's his blog

Empire Building by Writing and Speaking

Don,

On your list of benefits, maybe you could spruce them up a bit to create some excitement?

Example:
OLD "Seven simple, proven strategies to increase your happiness."

NEW "Seven Quick and Easy, PROVEN Strategies to BOOST Your Happiness -By Tonight!"

Before I saw derricks4's post, I rewrote the book description:

New description

Old description:

:-Don

I think it's better Don but could still be improved a lot. A few months ago I picked up a Kindle book titled Make a Killing on Kindle by Michael Alvear. Just about everything in that book is really excellent material. In it he talks a lot about book descriptions. He points out that Amazon allows authors 4000 characters to write their blurbs and how most people don't take advantage of that. He makes the point that authors bust their humps to write a great book but the book description is often little more than an afterthought.

This was a MASSIVE eye opener for me. I went through most of my titles and rewrote the book descriptions. I took the time to make them come alive, to make the book more appealing. I spent considerable time with them and improved them a lot using all of the space Amazon allows. And I got a very noticeable bump in sales almost immediately. Make no mistake about it, this is copywriting.

He also talks about optimizing the description and listing keywords. Essentially this is SEO for the Amazon SE. The book description and keyword stuff alone was worth the $6 for the book. Might be something to consider.

For 6 bucks, if I get one good idea (or even 1/2 of a good idea) from it, the price is right. I just ordered it. Oh boy! Now I have something good to read while I goplay like a hamster on the treadmill and climbing machine. I love using a Kindle for that, because I can make the font size large enough to read while my body is moving. I just can read the Kindle Fire outside in the sunlight.

Maybe I should go look at Michael Alvear's descriptions of his own books at Kindle. There may be good examples of his process in there.

Thanks

:-Don

:-Don

Okay, after listening to Marcia and Alex, Loren, and Derrick, then reading the book travlinguy suggested, I've had another go at it.

Thanks in advance.

Untitled Document

:-Don

If possible I'd get some credibility in there, and for this I'd go for some science. Do you have any science to back up what you're saying? If so, I'd make reference to it right at the beginning.

If possible I'd even refer to the experiment and then create a cliff hanger as to what the study revealed.

A great guy to look at around this type of stuff is Malcolm Gladwell. All of his stuff is based around "pseudo science" as he's drawing his own conclusions from the data, but his books are very readable and sell like gangbusters.

edit: I buy a lot of books in Amazon, and based on this description I wouldn't buy your book. Why? Not sure, but it's very generic. In fact based on what I've seen I'd go straight to your bad reviews and see whether they confirmed my "generic" opinion.

I think that's why I'm pushing for the scientific angle. You need a story or something to grab me, not just generic "unlimited happiness" that you're selling here.

Thank you for helping.

I just had a PM conversation with Tina Adams (Tinkerbell), and here is part of my reply...

To be able to get happy and stay that way forever after sounds crazy doesn't it? A couple
dozen years ago a friend made a casual comment to me that gave me an idea. I now have 24 years of written documentation as to what it did.

In doing research for this book, (I looked at as many studies as I could find over the past 5 months) I learned that a new branch of psychology began around the same time, but the Positive Psych system wasn't announced until 1998 by Martin Seligman PhD. (According to Wikipedia.) A handful of social scientists have been running studies since that time and have validated the process that will make people become happy, and stay that way.

The academic studies do get quite detailed and make for some boring reading. I've written the book with stories to help illustrate the concepts.

Interestingly the very best technique the scientists have found is the same thing I
stumbled upon 24 years ago after hearing a casual comment from a friend.

John Detlefs mentioned Malcolm Gladwell. Funny thing a couple of the studies I cover in detail are ones Gladwell put in his book, "Blink." I see there must be several thousand websites who have quoted Gladwell's version of the studies. However, I went back to the actual papers published by Bargh and his associates, and show the proof for priming with actual details from the study, which Gladwell didn't.

I've all so included strategies that have also been proven to increase happiness and help people remove anger, resentments, and envy. The weird part, I found is these exact same strategies have been taught in various 12-step recovery organizations for decades, because they keep people from feeling bad and going back to their addiction as an escape.

Alcoholics Anonymous started the 12-steps back in the mid 1930's. Most of these strategies do not appear in the literature, but are continually taught in the meetings. Thus several million people are actively using these strategies, and were doing so long before the Positive Psychology movement started. Who knew?

I include all my sources at the end so readers who might want more information can go to the original documents.

I guess this all "stuff" I should include in the description.

BTW for anyone who has commented here, if you want to take a look at the book, send me a PM and I can send you a .pdf of the book.

Thank you,

:-Don

You need to capture the crowd. I would still want to see some pointer, tip, explanation, blurb, cto about WHY being happier than I am now (regardless of current state) is beneficial.

Be happier and live longer, make more money with a smile, lower blood pressure through inner happiness, be happy and find peace, etc etc etc..

If your purpose is to sell books, rather than just publish you will have to massage the masses somehow. Specially since this niche has some tough competition.

Millions and millions (and hopefully millions more) other people like me for whom college graduation was decades ago. lol


I rewrote it again using the excellent help I have been getting here. The orange is Amazon orange. I've learned we can use HTML (with a little bit of jury-rigging) in our descriptions. This should be interesting.

4th happy description

:-Don