Kindle Bootcamp Day 5: Creating A Mouth Watering Book Description

Welcome back to Kindle Bootcamp! I hope you were able to get a lot accomplished last night writing the content for your new book.

Today we are going to touch on formatting and uploading your book for Kindle and then talk at length about how to write a description for your book on Amazon that will make your readers salivate at the prospect of reading your book.

I know, that sounds a bit dramatic, but really, your book’s description can make or break the deal for your prospective buyer.

More on that later….for right now, let me drop you a few resources I used when learning how to format and upload my book to the KDP platform.

Building Your Book For Kindle I read this book before I published anything to Kindle and it was a huge help. It’s  actually written by Kindle Direct Publishing and it’s free.

How To Publish And Sell Your Article On Kindle This book opened my eyes up to the correct way to publish a short book or guide on Kindle. It shows you how to make the most of your front matter and also how to let your readers know your book is short without turning them away.

These 2 books are really all you need, in my opinion, to learn everything you need to know about formatting and uploading.

Now, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of today’s lesson…..

How To Create A Mouth Watering Description That Will Pull Your Reader In And Hook Them To Click That “Buy Now” Button

Along with your title, cover, and book’s content, your book’s description is just as important in hooking your reader’s attention and getting that sale.

One of the biggest mistakes I see authors (newbies and experienced authors alike) making on Amazon, is neglecting to treat their book’s description like the converting sales copy it should be.

When people go into a book store, most commonly, they decide whether or not they are going to buy the book by reading the title, looking at the cover design, and reading the summary on the back.

If the summary on the back doesn’t catch their attention straight away, they don’t bother opening the book to look around.

The same principle applies to Amazon. Your title could be great, your cover eye catching, but if your book’s description is bland and unappealing, forget it. Your could-be customer is going to hit that back button faster than you can blink.

There are thousands, if not millions, of books on Amazon. You must give your reader a solid reason why they should buy your book!

Address Your Reader’s Objections And Clinch The Sale


A good description will not only tell your reader what your book is about, it will also answer any objections they have to actually taking the plunge and buying it.

Let’s take a look at some of the objections your customer may have as he or she checks out your book’s description. If you can effectively address these objections, there is no reason why you won’t make the sale.

  • I’m not quite sure what this book is about….
  • I see spelling and grammar errors, I wonder if these errors reflect the quality of the book?
  • This description doesn’t tell me much about what I will get when I read the book.
  • The description is flat, unexciting. The book must be too.
  • This book doesn’t seem like it will effectively solve my problem. (non fiction)
  • I can’t really tell what the characters are all about. (fiction)
  • The cover looks way better than the description, that’s strange.

For many writers, coming up with their book’s description is one of the hardest parts of self publishing. You’ve just spent a ton of time writing your book, and the quality and content are so absolutely wonderful, shouldn’t the book just sell itself?

Wouldn’t that be nice?! Unfortunately, the work doesn’t stop for the self publisher after the book has been written. You also have to perform the marketing and sales duties of that of a traditional publishing house.

Grab A Description Template From Your Biggest Competitors

One of the things I like to do before I begin writing my book’s description is check out descriptions of my biggest competitors in my genre. Which ones stick out the most. If you were in the market to buy a book in your genre, which description makes you want to hit that “buy” button?

Also, go through your competitors reviews, check the low star reviews to find out what your competitor’s books are lacking, and be sure (if your book addresses some of these things) to include this in your description.

When people browse for a book, they do read the reviews also, so they will be well aware by the time they hit your book what areas your competitors are lacking.

Setting Your Book’s Description Apart From All Competition

You’ve put a lot into getting your book uploaded onto Amazon. You’ve written killer content, designed your book cover with care, thought long and hard about your book’s title, chosen your categories carefully, and wrote a captivating description.

There are 2 ways you can go about formatting your description:

1. Create an Author Central account, add your book to your profile, and edit the description from within.  From the inside of your Author Central account, you have options to use bold, italicize, numbered lists, and bulleted lists. All font is black, and you are allowed up to 4000 character. (appx 600 words) This is an extremely easy way to style your description, however, one con to using Author Central for description editing is you don’t have access to using the infamous orange colored headers Amazon is so well known for, or the many other supported HTML tags.

This may not seem like a huge deal to you, but since Amazon removed our ability to insert fancy elements like images and videos in 2013, that orange header is one of the only elements that really makes your description pop. Another con to editing your description within Author Central is that once you edit your book there, you can no longer make edits from your KDP bookshelf. So, if you decide you want to utilize more of the supported HTML tags in your book’s description via the description editor in KDP later, you’re stuck.

If you have already edited your description in Author Central, the only way to edit in KDP is to contact Amazon and ask them to remove your book from Author Central, as currently there is no way to do this yourself.

2. The second option, though a bit more complicated, is to edit your book via KDP. This option gives you more control over what your description looks like. You can use more HTML tags, like <h2> (the orange header referenced above), <h1> through <h6>, subscripts, superscripts, and underlines.

If you know HTML, then this option is a no-brainer. If you don’t know HTML, but still want to use this option, you can check out Better Book Tools by Andy Makar. This tool helps you format your descriptions for the KDP editor, and you can even preview your description before you publish it to see exactly what it will look like when live on Amazon. Very handy tool to have around.

Now that you are armed with knowledge on how to write book descriptions that convert, take this information, and complete the action step below.

Action Step: Write your book’s description. I know you are not done writing your book’s content yet, but you can still do a rough draft on your book’s description. This will actually help you become more organized when writing your content.

Be sure to check your email tomorrow for day 6 of Kindle Bootcamp where we will go over how to hit the pricing sweet spot!
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