CHILDREN’S BOOK DESCRIPTION – TIPS & TRICKS

Whether or not you write a picture book or a middle-grade chapter book, a well written children’s book description is incredibly important.

Unfortunately, many authors do not plan ahead and throw something together at the very last minute, right before they hit the publish button. The truth is, however, that a planned-out description (also called blurb) can set your book miles apart from others.

Oftentimes, it’s this description that lets potential buyers know if your book is the one they’ve been searching for. Therefore, a great blurb should at the very least do 2 things:

1. Hook the reader right away, so he or she will want to read the blurb in its entirety.
2. Let the readers know if this indeed is the book that will address and fill their needs.

This post is all about how to write the perfect book description for your children’s book. Here’s what we will cover:

WHAT IS A BOOK DESCRIPTION & WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

While the title of a book greatly helps its discoverability and grabbing the buyer’s attention, it’s the words we use to describe the book that often are the reason a reader decides to buy (or not to buy) it.

A book blurb is a short (no more than 250 words) description of your book. If written well, it can be one of the most important marketing tools, as it hooks readers, convincing them the buy.

I won’t go too much into details, but because Amazon truly evaluates every bit of information we provide about our book,  what we’re including in our description also influences Amazon’s algorithm, which in turn decides which book is put in front of what audience.  

So as you can see, a well-written blurb is very important to the success of your book. So let’s see how we can make the most of it.

KEY ELEMENTS & IDEAS:

When it comes to our children’s book description, what are some of the things we should and could include and weave into our description? What should we pay attention to? What makes a description a truly good one? Let’s look at some of the key elements and ideas we may come across and use them as inspiration for our own books.

A hook will make people want to keep on reading. Ideally, this hook is at the very beginning of your description and only one single sentence long. The more concise we can be here, the better.

This little tease can come in a number of shapes and sizes.

• A question
• Parts of a rhyme (if it’s a rhyming children’s book)
• Fun statement about the main character
• An unusual statement about a certain situation

Here are some great examples of such hooks. See if you can guess what books they are from. Then click on the links to see if you were right.

“If a hungry little mouse shows up on your doorstep, you might want to give him a cookie.”

“There was a hippopotamus who hiccupped quite-a-lotamus. And every time he got’emus… he’d fall upon his bottomus!”

“In a great green room, tucked away in bed, is a little bunny.”

“Words are powerful. They can hurt or they can heal.”

Awards are something that truly set your children’s book apart from all the others. And while we want to display them, we want to make sure to do so in a concise manner. Here, it’s best to simply weave it into one of your other sentences. This way, we still share this important piece of information, but also don’t linger too long.

Here is a great example of how to showcase and weave in your award. See if you can guess what books they are from (click on the link to see if you were right):

“A New York Times Best Seller and award-winning book, this story is for anyone who’s ever had a big idea.”

Is your book part of a series? Then that would be a great little piece of information to weave into your book description. This will let potential buyers know that you have more than one book to offer, thereby helping you promote your other books in this series as well.

Again, this can be done very succinctly by simply weaving it into one of your other sentences.

Sometimes, it can be helpful to define or gently hint toward your audience for your potential readers. That way, they will know exactly what to expect.

For example, if your picture book is all about police cars, you could include a little phrase such as “Little police car fans will delight in …” Here, readers know right away whom this book is (and isn’t) for, and either keep on reading or move on.

KEYWORDS & SYNONYMS:

Now, these two are a huge one! Including keywords, keyphrases, and synonyms is important, because Amazon evaluates every bit of information you provide about your book. That’s because its algorithm uses this information to decide which book to put in front of what visitor.

Amazon’s ultimate goal is to make a sale. And that’s why it is trying to match up each buyer with the product he or she is most likely to purchase.

So if buyers are searching for a monkey book, books that have monkey as its keyword in the description (as well as some other important places) will fare far better than those that do not.

Oftentimes, we think more is better. But when it comes to getting busy people to read our blurb, it’s very important to keep it as short and sweet as we possibly can.

For children’s books especially, a description shouldn’t be more than 200 words. More often than not, everything we need to say can be done with around 100-150 words. Just with the children’s book itself, make every word count. The more concise you can make it, the better.

THE LAYOUT OF YOUR PICTURE BOOK DESCRIPTION:

When it comes to the layout of your book description, which of these two versions do you think looks better and more inviting?

Jim the chimpanzee is in a terrible mood for no good reason. His friends can’t understand it–how can he be in a bad mood when it’s SUCH a beautiful day? They encourage him not to hunch, to smile, and to do things that make THEM happy. But Jim can’t take all the advice…and has a BIT of a meltdown. Could it be that he just needs a day to feel grumpy?

Suzanne and Max Lang bring hilarity and levity to this very important lesson. This picture book is an excellent case study in the dangers of putting on a happy face and demonstrates to kids that they are allowed to feel their feelings (though they should be careful of hurting others in the process!).

Need more Jim Panzee in your life? Don’t miss the next book, Grumpy Monkey: Party Time!

So be sure to always break up your text.

To do so, you can use this amazing Book Description Formatting Tool that I discovered many moons ago.

CHILDREN’S BOOK DESCRIPTION CASE STUDY:

Below is a case study of the description of the children’s book The Garbage Trucks Are Here. Based on what I’ve shared above, let’s take a look at all the different elements, and why (or why) not they are working. 

(Please note that this description is color coded only for this case study right here, and appears as regular text on Amazon.)

The Parade is done
And the streets are a mess.
Here come the garbage trucks
To do what they do best.

This illustrated children’s book is for all the little boys and girls that love garbage trucks. You’ll encounter a front-loading garbage truck, a rear-loading garbage truck, a side-loading garbage truck, a grapple truck and even a wheezing and slurping vacuum truck.

Bits of facts about each type of garbage truck have been beautifully woven into the rhyming story, providing little garbage truck enthusiasts with a story that lets their love for these gobbling giants come to life. They will want to read it over and over again.

To learn more and to watch the BOOK TRAILER, visit www…

WHY THIS DESCRIPTION WORKS:

APPEARANCE:

• First, I would like you to notice the overall picture. This description has been divided into easily digestible paragraphs that are appealing to the reader’s eyes.

LENGTH:

• With less than 150 words, we’ve been able to share everything needed for potential buyers to make a decision as to whether or not this book is the right one to purchase.

HOOK:

• In this particular example, the hook is both the target age group, as well as some fun rhymes, hinting toward the fact that the book itself may be written in rhyme as well.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

• This blurb clearly establishes whom this book is for: little boys and girls that love garbage trucks

KEYWORDS / KEYPHRASES:

• Here, the keyword clearly is garbage truck. Note that even though this word appears over and over again, it does so in a rather natural way. We also have a number of other words that are related to garbage trucks, such as trash and waste, which may also be relevant to a buyer’s search.
• If you need help coming up with keywords and keyphrases for your children’s book, here’s a post I shared about my favorite tool that helps me find the best keywords for my own books.

ABOVE / BELOW THE FOLD:

• When checking out the book’s description directly on Amazon, you’ll see that the most important part of this blurb is ABOVE the fold (indicated by the gray line). This simply means that everything above the fold is visible on Amazon, without having to click on the READ MORE selection button. That’s important, because many readers will not click to read more, if the text above the fold does not interest them. So here, everything above the fold captures people’s interest, and everything below the fold helps to seal the deal.

WHEN TO WRITE YOUR CHILDREN’S BOOK DESCRIPTION:

When it comes to writing your blurb, it’s best to wait until you’ve at least completed your story. I personally like to wait until the very end, even after my illustrations have been completed. And that’s because I like to take everything into considering, letting myself be inspired by both my story as well as my cover illustration.

OTHER VALUABLE EXAMPLES TO CHECK OUT AND STUDY:

Ready to practice what you’ve learned today?

Below, I have included a number of fantastic examples of different types of children’s books, including a rhyming picture book, middle grade chapter book, and a regular picture book. Simply click on each image to be taken to Amazon, where you can view the descriptions.

When looking at these examples’ descriptions, ask yourself:

1. What is the hook of this description? What makes me keep on reading?
2. What is it that may convince me that this is the book I have been looking for?
3. What is the layout of this description? Is it visually inviting?

Training your brain to look for certain things like this will help you greatly with the writing of your very own description.

YOUR POWER ASSIGNMENT:

Now it’s your turn.

I want to make my written KNOWLEDGE-VAULT pieces as actionable as possible for you. I’d like to help you re-train your brain. From now on, try paying special attention to other books’ blurbs.  Knowing your own type of children’s book, go ahead and make a list of at least three descriptions of books that are similar to yours. Take note of things like:

1. Title
2. URL (for easy future access)
3. Book topic
4. Why it works?/ What made you keep on reading?/ What caught your attention?

Once you’re ready to work on your own book description, you will have already collected a number of fantastic examples that you can now easily emulate and draw inspiration from.

Here’s a table layout you can use to have all your collected information in one single spot in order to stay organized.

xo

~ Eevi 

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