Writing back cover blurb

May I put on my reader hat here? I know the back blurb is supposed to hook the reader, but I have read far too many that have little resemblance to the book between the covers. In fact, I once picked up a book by an author whose books I had read before. The blurb seemed completely unfamiliar. It wasn't until I reached the second chapter that I realized that it wasn't just that the author's style was familiar. I had read the book before.

Yes, the back blurb should make the browser want to read the book, but it should not give the reader cause to distrust you.

Why I don't have any links and such to help, I will say a blurb is kind of like the query, only gives away less info. Don't stress or over-think it either

Check out some of the blurbs for your publisher's current releases to get a feel for what they want.

We polled some readers very recently and they all said the same things. Short was better, if it was too long they weren't likely to read it and that it needed to make them excited about reading it.

Something else to keep in mind too is that if you are loading to Barnes and Noble via smashword the limit for them is 300 characters.

Hope that helps.

What blurb did you use in your query? That's usually a good place to start.

For my first blurb the publisher lightly edited my query letter and used that.

For my second I was asked to write a blurb from scratch and was kind of stymied the way you are now. What I did was read as many blurbs from that particular publisher as I could. Also, jclarkedawe kindly pointed me to this thread, which had some helpful stuff in it. Good luck!