How to Write Fiction Sales Copy

by Dean Wesley Smith

USA Today bestselling author and former publisher Dean Wesley Smith knows how to navigate the complicated world of publishing. And now, he shares his experience to help writers tackle the most challenging writing of Fiction Sales Copy.


In this WMG Writer’s Guide, Dean addresses the major challenges that lead to bad sales copy—including using passive voice and too much plot—and offers 32 examples from his own stories to illustrate his points.


Want to make your books stand out from the pack and grab the reader’s attention? Then learn from Dean’s experience and discover how to write copy that best sells your stories.


“Dean Wesley Smith’s blog gives both a slightly different view of the publishing world than I’d seen before and detailed hands-on ‘here’s how to get from A to B’ instruction.”
— Erin M. Hartshorn, A Resource for Writers

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

ebook

Published October 27, 2015

About the author

Pen Names
Edward Taft
Dee W. Schofield
Sandy Schofield
Kathryn Wesley

Dean Wesley Smith is the bestselling author of over ninety novels under many names and well over 100 published short stories. He has over eight million copies of his books in print and has books published in nine different countries. He has written many original novels in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thriller, and romance as well as books for television, movies, games, and comics. He is also known for writing quality work very quickly and has written a large number of novels as a ghost writer or under house names.

With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. The following is a list of novels under the Dean Wesley Smith name, plus a number of pen names that are open knowledge. Many ghost and pen name books are not on this list because he is under contractual obligations not to disclose that he wrote them. Many of Dean’s original novels are also under hidden pen names for marketing reasons.

Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.

Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books.

Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.

Reviews

[Catherine · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book reads like a cautionary tale on writing your own blurbs. The examples the author uses (all from his own indie pubbed work) range from the hilariously bad to the creepily bad to the utterly inexplicable, none of which inspire me to read any of them. I have no idea why he chose to use only his own work as examples but so it is. No writer is equally great at all aspects of the business and I think the lesson here is to recognize when your efforts aren't working and ask for help when you need it from colleagues and other professionals. It's also worth noting that "fiction sales copy" encompasses descriptions, tags, guest blogs, ad copy if you're designing your own ads and so forth, not just blurbs. So, yeah, not recommended. I'd suggest a copywriting class or equivalent and reviewing the ads for books you like, if indeed you are writing your own.

[William Aicher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat useful, but not remarkably. The book is mostly a series of examples of books/short stories that the author has published along with how he wrote the copy for them. There is no breakdown or analysis of actual effectiveness of the copy or any sort of methodological testing to show that these ways of writing copy are impactful. Gives a few good ideas of things to keep in mind, but really seems to be much more a catalog of the writer's books than any sort of useful guide.

[Carrie Daws · Rating 2 out of 5]

As others stated in their reviews, this is a compilation of blurbs the author wrote for a group of short stories he wrote a few years ago. The start of each chapter is repetitive, and the blurbs are, well, they don't intrigue me to look at buying the book. While I mostly skimmed this, I didn't find much that was helpful.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very helpful how to book with concrete examples. I bought it with the NaNoWriMo story bundle which made it worth while. The regular stand alone price is a little too high for what this book gives you.

[Neliza Drew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good ideas, but very very repetitive, which might have seemed fine as an audio book or podcast series to repeat what each prior chapter covered at the beginning of the next, but in print? I can flip back.

[Daniel Schwabauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Short and repetitive. Fiction craft junkies may find some helpful advice here, but it reads like something thrown together very quickly.

[Karen Morrissey · Rating 4 out of 5]

People are right when they say the book is repetitive. It was assembled from a series of blog posts by the author. That said, I'm an indie publisher of mostly other people's work, and I found the advice very helpful. I've used it to come with back cover blurbs I like for two forthcoming novels. In fact, I'm going back over the other novels to rewrite them using Smith's advice.

After a lot of consideration, I agree with one of Smith's counterintuitive major premises, that blurbs should avoid revealing plot unnecessarily. Much of his useful content describes different strategies for writing intriguing copy that does not need to reveal much plot. He is also spot on that a blurb should make the genre of the story clear.

I, too, bought this as an ebook in a NaNoWriMo bundle. This book alone made the bundle worthwhile.

Yes, the content of this book was still available as blog posts on the author's website at the time of this review, but I find having them collected together in a single book convenient.

[Nessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Instead of the book, I just read the version of this available on Dean's blog for free. I dunno if it'll still be there next year/when he'll remove it, so get on it.

No gonna lie, my eyes glazed over since it was just 90% examples, though explained by DWS, but boy oh boy. Though let's be real, this is for indie published people, and I...well I put my stuff on archive of our own and Wattpad for free so... heh, might not be the target audience atm. Though I'd love to you know, be published and etc, I first wanna improve my writing skills.

Either way, the real reason I read it was cause it might disappear like his Writing Into the Dark did, and I love me some freebies hehe.

Though really, in order to study blurbs you need to read a bunch of them and write a bunch of them. His ones as examples were nice, but I'd have liked to see him use from other authors too. Oh well, can't expect much when it's such a small book!

[Kaye Lynne Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

How to Write Fiction Sales Copy, by Dean Wesley Smith offers three different formulas for writing back cover blurbs and sales copy, which are aimed toward a wide distribution, and several different approaches. Smith is an old pro in this writing game and he’s good at what he does, (which is write). While his methods are not as formulaic and are not specific to Amazon, they are never-the-less effective in posing unspoken questions about the book and making readers want to know more. Smith also offers 32 actual story blurbs as examples in multiple genres.

Read my full review on my authors' blog, "Writing to be Read", here: https://writingtoberead.com/2022/02/1...

[Miguel Ángel Alonso Pulido · Rating 3 out of 5]

Para muchos escritores, redactar sinopsis se les hace cuesta arriba y en este pequeño libro Dean Wesley Smith enseña cómo evitarlo, con siete técnicas distintas, explicadas con ejemplos prácticas paso a paso. A ratos es muy repetitivo, pero en un manual de este tipo eso no es necesariamente malo. Recomendable para quienes necesiten reforzar su escritura de sinopsis.

[Aaron Leyshon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the premise for this, but found myself skimming through the chapters. At best, it's an okay crib file for sales copy. The Allred inspired (or Aldris Budrys formula) copy was to my mind the most persuasive and exciting. Overall, though, this didn't really feel like it needed to be a book.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info

Good, understandable information on how to write sales copy. It gets a little repetitive, but the info is very useful.

[Necia Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book to invest in

Clear and to the point. He shows several methods of writing a good sales copy. I would recommend anyone who is preparing to self publish to get this book.

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this was in a Nanowrimo humble bundle I grabbed one year.

In July of 2015, I managed to write one short story a day. Actually had one extra, so ended up with 32 stories. (Kindle Locations 6-7)

Each story would need a cover and a tagline, plus a blurb. And that means writing ‘sales copy’. The thing that most authors say is too HARD.
So DWS took the idea a step further, he’d talk us through the process.
Hmmm… okay.
And it’s here:
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-July-D...
Hint: you can read the first 3 or 4 in the sample.
Sales copy for a book/story is slightly longer than your one sentence story summary. It’s the blurb; a couple of paragraphs (four or so) enticing enough for a customer to click the buy button. And it can be complicated by a character minimum or limit for each of the ebook sales sites. Smashwords has different rules than Kobo, say.
He does note that if he was loading them up there as separate items, they would have an extra part for the author bio.
He demonstrates seven different structures to use; some will change with genre and some will need more sublety when there is a twist. Don’t spoil your own story for a reader before they’ve even read it.
Super useful and I like to see the 32 examples. He even has the covers included.
I’ll be coming back to this.
4 stars

[Pam Baddeley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was interesting as far as it went and I can see what the author was getting at, but unfortunately all his examples are on how to write blurbs for short stories. He tells you to just use the plot of the first page and not what happens later. However, if you have written a whole novel, I believe you have to say a bit about characters and developments that come in later. Not a lot, obviously, but if you start with the protagonist's dilemna on page 1, that's fine for a short story that ideally concentrates on a small cast and one problem, but with a novel, the initial problem facing the character is only the starting point. Certainly that's the situation with the novel I'm currently editing, and I can't see how you can apply the lessons of this book to novels, especially long novels.