A black shirt and glops of golden yoghurt

As you’d expect, there’s quite a lot of research into what makes people buy stuff. And, as you’d expect, writers are mostly very, very, very not interested in exploring it.

But that’s tough on you, because this email is going to tell you anyway. And yes, I know you want to write books and leave selling to someone else. But that’s not how it works. Even if you’re traditionally published, you’ll be asked to review blurbs, think about cover art, review social media yadda and email lists… and, if you self-publish, then you’ll be thinking about Facebook ads and the like as well.

You don’t have to turn into the sort of person who wears a black shirt, and a gold medallion, and fake tan so thick it looks like a kind of golden yogurt. But you do have to engage with how your book strikes people on first view, not just on full view.

And here are some tips. They’re all based on actual scientific research (hence the slightly weird precision in the data), so what follows isn’t just an opinion piece. That said, books are different from a lot of consumer products, so you have to adjust accordingly. (For those interested: here’s where I got my data.)

Say you

Address the reader as though they’re in the room with you. Say, ‘you’. The result of that direct address is that people feel around 20% more involved in your brand. Since you’re really trying to build that direct relationship, that involvement matters.

Say I

And be you. Don’t depersonalise yourself. Not ‘This story was written to thrill,’ but, ‘I wanted to thrill you.’ Keep the relationship front and centre.

The difference between ‘I’ and ‘we’ in a study was a sales improvement of around 7%. My guess? With a brand that ought to be focused on you as author, the positive results are probably greater than that. The author-reader relationship has the potential to be way stronger than (say) the toothpaste-manufacturer / tooth-owner relationship.

Here and now

For the same sort of reasons, don’t jump into the past. Keep any marketing-type copy in the present tense. The stats say that this helps it sound up to 26% more helpful / compelling. And you want to compel.

Be assertive

There are different ways of being assertive. You can make firm claims rather than wishy-washy ones. (So ‘all’ or ‘always’, not ‘mostly’ or ‘often’.)

Strong negatives also show assertiveness: ‘you won’t read a better thriller this year’ just sounds punchier than ‘this will be one of the best thrillers you’ve read for a long time.’

The effect of this kind of language can boost engagement by up to 18%.

Avoid technical language

Yes, your book may be a near-future SF story about a moon-mission gone wrong. But keep your blurb clear, not cluttered. If you write ‘When the landing craft hit the rim of a crater…’, the reader knows instantly what you mean. If you write ‘When the orbital descent vehicle foundered on the lip of an impact basin…’, you’ve lost your zing.

I’m not talking here about the language inside the book – your book and your characters and your story will need to determine that. But don’t fail to get people through your entrance door. And that means, keeping it clear and keeping it simple.

If you do clutter up your language, sales drop by up to 16%. (And, honestly, in the context of books where the nearest competitive product is only a click away, I think sales will drop a lot more than that.)

The rule of three

An interesting one this, because at first sight it doesn’t apply to books. The rule is: list three benefits, not two, not four, not five.

Why? Well, three just beats any other number by 10.4%. It appears that three works because it establishes a pattern without seeming too fake.

Additionally, there’s evidence that says if you list three excellent benefits of X, and then also two good benefits, consumers take a kind of average score and think, ‘Yeah, not so excellent really.’ Sticking only with the excellent options means that consumers were willing to spend up to 37% more.

Now, you’re not offering a baking tin or a waterproof jacket. You’re offering a book, and the benefit of a book (assuming it’s fiction) is just that it’s good and will grip the reader. So maybe listing benefits doesn’t really apply.

Except that… Netflix uses the rule of three all the time. Take a quite excellent programme – Harry & Meghan, for example: it’ll be described with a trio of adjectives – Captivating / Investigative / Social-cultural.

I think the same applies to any time you try to intrigue a reader with your book. Take my Fiona books. If I used a trio of words, it might be something like ‘Intelligent, Intense, Suspenseful’. If I tried to layer things on top of that (‘Literate, dark, celtic noir, thought-provoking’), the pitch to the reader becomes so muddled as to be indecipherable.

And that rule of three applies even where you might not expect. Let’s say you’ve picked the adjectives and themes you want to push. Everything needs to point at those specific things.

So if you have a reader-review that chimes beautifully with the adjectives you’ve picked – then great, use it. But quite likely, you also have a reader-review that says something positive, but not aligned with your core themes. In that case, including the review is muddling the message. It’s leaving the reader uncertain about what you’re offering.

So pick your themes – three of them – and work those hard.

Syntactic surprise

And here’s an interesting (and more writer-y) piece of of advice:

According to research shared by Thomas McKinlay, simply using a surprising sentence pattern in your copy can help you get a 127.5% increase in click-through rates (CTR).

So here’s your expected sentence structure:

Red Bull will give you energy for hours.

Take a trip anywhere you feel like going.

Uber Eats can deliver a delicious meal to your door.

Boring, right? And here’s the same thing, made a little less expected:

Red Bull gives you wings

Belong anywhere. [AirBnB]

A delicious meal at your door, by Uber Eats.

There used to be a way to calculate ‘syntactic surprise’, but the online calculator tool seems dead. That’s a shame, but you’re a writer – you don’t need it. Making nice sentences is your thing, right?

And a 127% increase in click-through rate? Wow. That’s the difference between an Amazon bestseller and one that’s nigh on impossible to market profitably.

Use these tools. Use them well. Be happy.

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FEEDBACK FRIDAY

Ooh, a challenging task this week. It comes in two pieces:

1. Give me an Amazon book description of 150 words or less.
2. Give me a ‘shout line’: a phrase or sentence (max 12 words, and ideally under 10) suitable for the front of your book. So for example: ‘Every family has secrets – some more deadly than others.’

We’re going to be looking for clear and compelling, mixed with a dash of syntactic surprise. A hard task this one, but a goodie.

As soon as you’re ready, log into Townhouse and post yours here.

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That’s it from me. 

Til soon,

Harry.