Episode 025 - Mastering Book Descriptions with Brian Meeks
May 5, 2020
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Brian Meeks talks through his revision of one of Matty's book descriptions to illustrate the copywriting methods that have enabled him to turn browsers into buyers on the online retail platforms.
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Brian Meeks is an author of fiction, including the Henry Wood Detective Series, and non-fiction, including Mastering Amazon Ads and Mastering Amazon Descriptions, writing across six genres. He had made his living as a full-time author, speaker, and teacher about “all things book business” for four years. He is fond of guinea pigs and snarky banter.
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Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Brian Meeks. Hi, Brian. How are you doing?
[00:00:06] Brian: I'm doing well. How are you today?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing very well, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Brian Meeks is an author of fiction, including the Henry Wood Detective Series, and nonfiction, including Mastering Amazon Ads and Mastering Amazon Descriptions, writing across six genres.
[00:00:25] He's made his living as a full-time author, speaker, and teacher about all things book business for four years, and he is fond of Guinea pigs. And I feel bad because Brian and I had a great conversation about Guinea pigs before we started the official interview, and then it turned out I hadn't hit record, but I promised him that I was going to include the referenced links to Guinea pig material in the show notes. So you won't miss it all. If you go to the show notes, you'll get some sense of what we talked about.
[00:00:54] Brian: We in great detail explained why Guinea pigs are therapeutic and why I love them, the story behind that. But the important thing is there'll be a link about a really cute video on YouTube that I think you'll adore.
[00:01:09] So if you have time and you need 53 seconds of Guinea pig happiness, then click on the link.
[00:01:16] Matty: Perfect. Thank you. And thank you for being a good sport about my technical foul up there.
[00:01:23] So the first thing I wanted to talk about, and we had chatted about this a little bit earlier, is that I had initially titled this episode "How to Write a Blurb." But blurb is often used in an ambiguous way. Sometimes people use it for that description that shows up on Amazon, shows up on the back cover of books, shows up on the retail platforms as a product description. And sometimes people use blurb as that little two sentence snippet you get if you're lucky from a famous author that you can put on your book cover in quotation marks.
[00:01:56] So we agreed that we're going to use the word description rather than blurb for what we're talking about today, because what we're really talking about is that thing that you put on the back cover, that thing that shows up on the retail platform descriptions.
[00:02:07] Brian: Absolutely. Yeah. That's the word I prefer. It doesn't bother me if clients want to call it a blurb, I know what they mean, but the most accurate term, in my opinion, is description because it's a product description. It's a piece of advertising designed to do one thing, and that is to get a potential reader to give your book a try.
[00:02:32] Matty: Yup. And we're going to be talking about some best practices there using a couple of my blurbs for my own books. But I first wanted to ask you, how did you get into the description writing business?
[00:00:06] Brian: I'm doing well. How are you today?
[00:00:08] Matty: I'm doing very well, thank you. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you, Brian Meeks is an author of fiction, including the Henry Wood Detective Series, and nonfiction, including Mastering Amazon Ads and Mastering Amazon Descriptions, writing across six genres.
[00:00:25] He's made his living as a full-time author, speaker, and teacher about all things book business for four years, and he is fond of Guinea pigs. And I feel bad because Brian and I had a great conversation about Guinea pigs before we started the official interview, and then it turned out I hadn't hit record, but I promised him that I was going to include the referenced links to Guinea pig material in the show notes. So you won't miss it all. If you go to the show notes, you'll get some sense of what we talked about.
[00:00:54] Brian: We in great detail explained why Guinea pigs are therapeutic and why I love them, the story behind that. But the important thing is there'll be a link about a really cute video on YouTube that I think you'll adore.
[00:01:09] So if you have time and you need 53 seconds of Guinea pig happiness, then click on the link.
[00:01:16] Matty: Perfect. Thank you. And thank you for being a good sport about my technical foul up there.
[00:01:23] So the first thing I wanted to talk about, and we had chatted about this a little bit earlier, is that I had initially titled this episode "How to Write a Blurb." But blurb is often used in an ambiguous way. Sometimes people use it for that description that shows up on Amazon, shows up on the back cover of books, shows up on the retail platforms as a product description. And sometimes people use blurb as that little two sentence snippet you get if you're lucky from a famous author that you can put on your book cover in quotation marks.
[00:01:56] So we agreed that we're going to use the word description rather than blurb for what we're talking about today, because what we're really talking about is that thing that you put on the back cover, that thing that shows up on the retail platform descriptions.
[00:02:07] Brian: Absolutely. Yeah. That's the word I prefer. It doesn't bother me if clients want to call it a blurb, I know what they mean, but the most accurate term, in my opinion, is description because it's a product description. It's a piece of advertising designed to do one thing, and that is to get a potential reader to give your book a try.
[00:02:32] Matty: Yup. And we're going to be talking about some best practices there using a couple of my blurbs for my own books. But I first wanted to ask you, how did you get into the description writing business?
read more ...
[00:02:45] Brian: Well, it started about three and a half years ago. A book I'd written, which was finished, edited twice, the cover art was done. I had gone on to Amazon, put all of the important information into KDP, had registered it with one of my ISBN numbers. There was one box left to fill out before I could hit Publish and I didn't want to. That box was the description. I wasn't in the mood. I was tired. It was late. I said, "Eh, I'll do it tomorrow."
[00:03:21] Well, tomorrow came and I didn't want to do it tomorrow either, nor the next day, the day after that. I spent 60 days procrastinating and when I hit the 60th day, the little voice in my head said, "Are you kidding me? It's been 60 days. Just write this stupid description and hit Publish." Because admittedly I don't do much for launches because I figure I can sell the book with Amazon ads, so I've never worried about the launch. I just hit Publish and then go with it from there.
[00:03:56] Well, I got on, I wrote a horrible description for this book, hit Publish. I felt relief because I hated writing descriptions so much, and the little voice said, "Really? Do you feel proud of yourself? It took you 60 days to write that horrible description."
[00:04:13] And so the little voice and I discussed it at length and decided that my friend Sean Platt, who's on a podcast called the Self-Publishing Podcast, he in a prior life before becoming an author was a world-class copywriter. Since I knew one and I knew that copywriting was an art, I'd been in the marketing department of Geico, and so I knew copywriters. I thought, well, I'm just going to send him an email. I did. I told him the story I just told you, said, "Sean, I need to learn this skillset because I don't want to ever procrastinate for 60 days on something as easy as that."
[00:04:53] So he sent me a book and I read it. It was <Joseph> Sugarman's book, it's called Adweek <The Adweek Copywriting Handbook>, and then ironically, there's a subtitle, which is horrible copywriting, the subtopic goes on and on and on and on <The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters>. This book Adweek is considered the copywriting Bible among copywriters. It's a brilliant piece, and if you read only one book on copywriting this year, make it Mastering Amazon Descriptions by Brian Meeks, because a lot of that book isn't really relevant.
[00:05:26] And so I wrote a book entirely for the author but took one important piece and this I want to give credit to Sugarman, he said the point of the first line is to get them to read the second line. The point of the second line is to get them to read the third line, and the point of the third line is to get them to read a paragraph that tells them something about the product.
[00:05:54] And so his point was, and we're going to talk about this a lot today, is that you need to hook the reader. And so over the three and a half years that I have now been doing this, I have refined what an opening hook means. I have added in more hooks throughout the description, and I've gone from a description that would typically convert at one in 30 to 35 meaning if you pay for 30 to 35 clicks, you'll get one new reader. They might buy the book, or they might download on Kindle Unlimited, but on a $4.99 book, it'll take 30 to 35 paid clicks to capture a new reader.
[00:06:39] My first foray into it, I got that down to one in 12. And then I've continued to improve, and now my best ones are one in eight to one in 10 which is, you don't need a master's degree in math. If I ask authors, who are math phobes, and I say, would you rather pay for 30 clicks or eight to 10 clicks? They all get that answer correct. And so that's why we're here today is to discuss what it takes to make a description that will convert with only eight to 10 clicks.
[00:07:17] Matty: I thought that a way we could go about that is that last year I'd gotten in touch with you and I wanted to overhaul the descriptions for my Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, and so I thought it would be educational for me to read what I sent you for Snakes and Ladders, it's Lizzy Ballard Book 2, and then for you to discuss why you made the changes that you did in the revision you provided.
[00:07:40] Brian: Perfect. Let's do it.
[00:07:42] Matty: So here is the original one that I sent to Brian.
[00:07:45] Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally are on the run after the fatal game of rock, paper, scissors with Vivantem's head of research, Louise Mortensen and her enforcer, George Millard. They find themselves in the Red Rock Country of Arizona, and Lizzy finds a mentor in Phillip Castillo, a psychic counselor with his own dark past.
[00:08:05] While Lizzy works with Phillip to try to control her deadly ability, Millard is hot on her trail and Lizzy's power will be no defense against the weapon he has chosen.
[00:08:14] When Lizzy makes her way back to Philadelphia, Louise and George strike at Owen and in a bid to protect her dwindling band of allies, Lizzy takes the fight to Louise's turf.
[00:08:24] In this deadly game of snakes and ladders, will Lizzy be rewarded for her virtues or punished for her vices?
[00:08:31] Brian: Okay, so that's where we began, and I want to discuss a couple things right out of the gate.
[00:08:38] The first, this is a pretty common format for most people who write their own descriptions, what you have here are three paragraphs, relatively thick, and then the last sentence with a question mark. The first thing that I notice is that the opening paragraph is a giant block of text, and I want everyone to imagine Facebook because most people are on Facebook. And I want you to think about when you see a post from one of your friends and it has a giant block of text, do you read the post, or do you just hit Like or Love and move on. Most people hit Like or Love and in fact, I've studied this in a very controlled way in the 20 Books to 50K group. I've written many, many posts there.
[00:09:33] People will ask questions. I'll say, well, that looks like something that is maybe universally misunderstood, so I'll write a post about it. When I was doing that in early 2017, I would typically get, on a 500 to a thousand-word post, which is a lot for Facebook, but you know, sometimes the answers required a deep explanation, I would get 50 Likes or Loves and 12 comments.
[00:10:05] Now, one day in 2018 I decided to use the copywriting skills that I'd put towards descriptions and do it on a post. Well, that posts had maybe five-, 600 Likes and Loves and 300 comments. Now, instantly I knew I had a vehicle using Facebook groups where I could test out copywriting theory.
[00:10:36] So I've written many, many articles. I call them articles, but they're blog posts or on Facebook in that group. And my results range from 300 to my best ever is 588 comments, which is a staggering number, and that post in 24 hours amassed 1600 Likes and Loves. It was 484 words, which is a long post. Now, I've had them up to 1500 and because I use hooks and short bits interspersed with thicker paragraphs, the short bits being the hooks that link them together, I'm able to keep a person engaged so they don't stop reading, which is a hard thing to do in this age of scroll and Like and Love and move on and click and click and click. To get somebody to stop and read that many words in a single post is quite a feat.
[00:11:36] And so it just reinforces in my mind the power of copywriting. And so when we go back to your description, what I see is the person opening it up, seeing the giant paragraphs, and they're not giant, but in copywriting they are. And a lot of people won't read it. They won't even bother.
[00:12:01] And so the cover is getting us the clicks in most cases. Once they get here, we need to get them to read it, to give them some feel for the book, not give it away, but we want them to have enough sense that they are curious and want to read it. That's what we're going for.
[00:12:21] And so the opening line, the above-the-fold part that is on the page before you click Read more, let me read just that part from yours.
[00:12:35] Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally are on the run after their fatal game of rock, paper, scissors with Vivantem head of research Louise Mortensen and her enforcer, George Millard. They find themselves in the Red Rock County of Arizona, ...
[00:12:50] Okay. That's important. That's where it ends. It doesn't draw the reader in, and it's a lot of words. I don't know how many, I haven't counted, but in the version that I wrote for you, let me read the bit that's above the fold.
[00:13:10] They altered the children's genetics ...
[00:13:14] Then there's a blank line, and then the next line begins with an ellipse. I often misuse ellipses, and this is something that has come about over several years of doing this and testing and trying to improve upon one in 12. This is a big part because They altered the children's genetics ... Nobody is going to stop reading at that point. They are going to have to go to the next line because we're a curious species, and so: They altered the children's genetics and intended to control them. Ooh, well that begs the question, control them how? And then the next line is, But to what end? That's where they will be faced with the decision to click Read more or not and finishing with But to what end? as opposed to Red Rock County, Arizona, there's going to be more people that click the Read more. So we've got that person hooked on finding out what's going on.
[00:14:28] They liked the cover. They had, let me see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 words is all above the fold. It's very lightweight. There isn't an enormous amount of words. We've hooked them.
[00:14:46] So the next line, we want to give them a little bit about the book. You have Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally. This is a common mistake. In most cases the last names aren't really necessary. It doesn't add information. They can learn the last names once they've bought the book. It's just two extra words and we are trying to trim out the words that aren't adding to the person's interest level.
[00:15:21] One thing that I want to emphasize is the way I format these is very intentional. The blank lines are just as important as the ones with the words on them because when you open them up, it's very lightweight on the page, and that's what we're going for.
[00:15:54] When they hit that Read more, we want them to see something that's going to be easy to read. Does that make sense?
[00:16:01] Matty: It does. Yes.
[00:16:02] Brian: Okay, well, very good. Let me continue reading. Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn't like it when people stick their noses in the company's business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy learn to control her powers in time?
[00:16:23] Okay, so I gave them a little bit of information. I put forth the name of the antagonist, which is a company in this case, I mentioned that they're an evil genetics firm, and then, Can Lizzy control her powers in time? Well, there at the end of that paragraph is another hook. Powers? What powers? What's that about? So they're going to continue reading.
[00:16:52] Well, the next slide I have is another hook. And sometimes I will have two or three between that first big paragraph and the next bit of information. In this case I have, or will her deadly abilities make matters worse? So now we have a sense that Lizzy has powers, we don't know what they are. They're serious powers because they're deadly. And perhaps the fact that she doesn't quite know how to control them may get her in trouble. So we don't really go into the details of what happens in the book, which is another mistake authors make. They often tell far too much about the plot and often give away spoilers.
[00:17:42] Matty: When I had drafted mine, I had been looking up the bestselling author blurbs for this type of book, and many of them were really surprisingly plot heavy and mainly all from traditional publishers.
[00:17:57] Brian: Yes. The traditional publishers, with the exception of one, because I wrote my first traditionally published description back in February, all the rest of them are crap. The just absolutely horrible. And I rewrote one for L. Ron Hubbard, his publisher, the book Battlefield Earth. You can go check it out. Admittedly my version ends after the second famous person blurb at the bottom. Normally I tell people that unless the person that wrote you that two sentence blurb is pretty famous, don't put it in there. It's just extra words. It's really not helping. But if it's Neil Gaiman, one was Kevin J. Anderson, and, the other one was Brandon Sanderson, and so I picked two of those and that's where I ended. The publisher then added a whole bunch of stuff at the end that's really not important.
[00:18:58] That makes it look heavy. I didn't do that, I just want to say, but I did get a very nice email from them three or four weeks after they had put up the new blurb and they had seen a significant spike in sales, which just means that they're getting conversions since changing, so they're happy with it. But the traditional wisdom is they just kind of ruin the book for you.
[00:19:21] And you mentioned something that I think is pretty common among authors. They will give the advice to newer authors, go see what the bestsellers are doing and do what they do. Which on the surface seems reasonable, but if everyone's doing it wrong and they're making $1 million a year in spite of their horrible description, the question that I always ask is how many sales are they leaving on the table? How much money is it costing them? And I actually did this analysis for my own books when I first wrote the descriptions using proper copywriting, after about a month, I went back and looked at the results and I'd seen across all my books, it had dropped to one in 12. This was when I was first starting.
[00:20:06] I'm better now, but one in 12 from one 30 is a significant improvement, and because I keep my data, I went back 12 months and I looked at my data, looked at the number of clicks, recalculated what I would have had for sales and KU downloads if I had done it 12 months earlier, and the total volume of net profit would have increased by $60,000 if I had done it 12 months earlier. I don't know that most authors are pessimists, but a lot of them, when I tell them that story, they're like, "Aw, that's awful."
[00:20:42] I didn't think about losing the 60,000 even once. I thought, "Oh, thank goodness I didn't wait five years." Because I could have been losing money that whole time. And so if people say, go do what the famous authors are doing, well, if the famous author is working hard, that's a good thing to do. But with the descriptions, no, they're horrible.
[00:21:09] Matty: I also wanted to say, apropos of the whole cramming plot points in there, is that not only was I following the advice of find bestselling authors and do what they're doing, but I realized that I also subconsciously was writing the blurb to appeal to the people who had read Book 1, which was Rock Paper Scissors.
[00:21:30] And so I think I had in my mind that I want to make sure that they know that the characters that I heard they really liked in Book 1 were still in Book 2. It's just another impetus for putting more plot detail in than you're saying is necessary.
[00:21:44] Brian: That's exactly right. And there are many reasons why authors do that.
[00:21:49] I tell people who want to learn this art, because one thing that I would like your listeners to take away from this is if I get you excited and you're thinking, "Wow, yes, I really would like to improve my conversions, so I should learn how to rewrite my description," don't think of it that way. You should be thinking, "Oh, I really want to learn copywriting because it will improve every aspect of my business."
[00:22:15] You don't use a skill just for your description. You use it on your emails to your reader list. You use it on your Facebook posts. If you have an author group or a reader group on Facebook where people come to discuss your books. You should always be writing in proper copywriting.
[00:22:34] And I tell everyone when you're on Facebook, even if somebody has just posted a picture of their new puppy, that's an opportunity to use proper copywriting. I only converse on Facebook in proper copywriting. If somebody reaches out to me with a DM, I use proper copywriting. If there's a puppy, I will write an opening hook: Every 500 years or so ... , and then if you hold shift down and hit enter twice--everybody who's listening, take note: shift and enter twice, that adds in your blank line--and then dot, dot, dot, so, Every 500 years ... a puppy comes along that is truly remarkable. And then another blank line. That is such a cute bit of fuzzy, and then another blank line. And if you're under the impression that you might post too many puppy pictures and annoy your Facebook friends, you would be mistaken. Keep them coming.
[00:23:39] And that is the way I would say it. And it will get all sorts of likes and loves from the people that see it more than the, "Aw, cute," stuff like that. So I'm always writing in copywriting. I've gotten very good at it and it's become natural because it is not natural. Authors, we write prose. Prose is not copy. In prose, you use complex sentences. You mix things up. You're painting pictures with words.
[00:24:12] In copywriting, it's short. It's punchy. You don't do the things that you do in prose because it's a different goal. You're not trying to paint this picture so much as you are just to get them to buy the book. And so I want us to think about that as I go back to our example.
[00:24:36] Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn't it like it when people stick their noses in the company's business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy control her powers in time?
[00:24:51] And so with the exception of the first sentence, Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run, it's all just beats.
[00:25:03] That's not to say you can't have a complex sentence in there. But you often will want to defer or err on the side of short and punchy because it gets to the point more quickly. Then we have a blank line and then, or will her deadly abilities make matters worse? Blank line. And then George Millard has one job. To track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won't be happy. He knows they're headed to Philadelphia.
[00:25:33] Now in this instance, I use the last name and I did it just to sort of break up the ... I don't like echoing, and that's not technically echoing, but I use Lizzy and Owen first names, and then George, I put the last name in there just because in that instance with that paragraph, I wanted it to be a little bit longer.
[00:25:59] So again, going back to my point about the appearance on the page is hugely important. So we don't want all short sentences. I have a description I'm going to rewrite today for a nonfiction book, and it's from an author who read Mastering Amazon Descriptions and he went too far towards the hooks.
[00:26:20] So top to bottom is all short lines. There aren't any paragraphs. And when you do that, what you have visually is a giant block of text. It's just a giant airy block of text because of all the black lines. But it's still visually a burden to look at. And so in this instance, I broke my rule about the last name. I put in George Millard to make it a little different. Add an extra word because I wanted a thicker paragraph. So: George Millard has one job. To track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won't be happy. He knows they're headed to Philadelphia.
[00:27:00] Matty: I also like George Millard there because George on its own, George has one job, doesn't sound at all threatening. Somehow George Millard has one job, sounds more threatening, like he's an entity, not just some arbitrary guy.
[00:27:14] Brian: Exactly. And also with the word George in my mind, I always think of Curious George. So there are times where I will break one of my rules because something makes me think of something else.
[00:27:30] And I'm always acutely aware of that. I just had this happen recently. There was a name, and the character's name was Caesar.
[00:27:38] And so in this instance, I wanted to use both names because when I saw Caesar in the opening part of the description, my mind immediately wondered, "Oh, is that Caesar Augustus, the emperor? Ooh, maybe it's a reference to Caesar from Planet of the Apes." Now, I might be the only person that went to the Planet of the Apes, but the fact that I paused during my reading of the description and my mind went down this different path, that's a bad thing. I want to eliminate that.
[00:28:15] And then I went further. Julio Cesar Chavez is a boxer. So just the word Caesar made me think of all these other Caesars that I knew, and I wasn't reading the description any anymore. So I look for instances that might be distracting. And so when I rewrote his description, I used the last name and there was no need to think about it because it didn't look like any other Caesars I knew.
[00:28:45] So anyway. Um, where did I leave off? Can he get the job done before she becomes unstoppable? So we've got George in there and we have another hook, which speaks back to her powers. And then I finish up with the call to action.
[00:29:06] Your description ends with, In this deadly game of snakes and ladders, will Lizzy be rewarded for her virtue or punished for her vice, which is a good hook, but you didn't ask them to buy the book. You always have to ask them to buy the book. And the reason I'll get to in just a moment. I want to read the way I asked them to buy the book.
[00:29:27] You'll love this deadly game of snakes and ladders because of all the twists and turns. Get it now.
[00:29:35] What I want people to understand, and this is especially for those that don't like calls to action, they don't like selling, they feel that it's dirty somehow, it's pushy. It's not. The call to action is a signpost.
[00:29:54] In advertising since we were born, since we were first plopped in front of a television set, our entire lives we had been exposed to advertising and the number of calls to action we have heard have made it so that we expect there to be a call to action. And when we get to it, it isn't the call to action that makes us take the action, it's that it tells us, " Yes, I've decided I want this book. Now it's okay to stop reading and take the action." It's that signpost.
[00:30:35] If you are driving down the street and you see a red octagon with a white band around it, even if it's too far away and it's through fog and you can't read the four letters on it, you still know it's a stop sign because we've seen so many of them.
[00:30:52] It's the same way with the call to action, and this is where I almost always use Get it now because it's short. Some people will say, Scroll up and to the right to one click and get Snakes and Ladders so you can get started reading today, or something horribly long. Scroll up to the right and one click so you can buy or download through Kindle Unlimited.
[00:31:23] Well, all of that is unnecessary. People that are in Kindle Unlimited, they know how to get their books downloaded for free. They do it four or five times a week. That's why they're paying the subscription for Kindle Unlimited. So telling them that information, is it adding anything? All it's doing is giving them a lot of words to read before they can go on and take the action.
[00:31:49] I don't want to slow them down. Now the paragraph that begins, You'll love this deadly game of Snakes and Ladders, because of all the twists and turns--this is very important. There are five powerful copywriting words, and this was research done by Copyblogger, a website devoted to the art of copywriting.
[00:32:13] they determined that you, because, instantly, now, and free are the five most powerful words in copywriting. I would agree. I would add that snarky is a pretty good word if you write satire, but they didn't research snarky.
[00:32:28] Matty: What were the five again?
[00:32:30] Brian: You, because, instantly, now, and free, so everyone should write those down and keep them in mind because they absolutely are powerful.
[00:32:41] Someone out there did one to know if you had because the way I've done it, you with a bit and then because and something after it, converted better than just using you or using some other sort of summation thing at the end as part of the call to action? Well, they did an ABC test. They had one thing at the end that finished without you and because, then they had two you and becauses. One you and because had like I did--because of all the twists and turns--something that made sense within the context of the ad copy or the marketing copy.
[00:33:24] The other one, the stuff that came after the because didn't really have anything to do with anything, was kind of throw away words. And what they found was both the B and the C, the you and because bits, converted vastly better than the A, the one they wrote that didn't have you and because, but the B and C didn't really have any difference.
[00:33:52] So they did a statistically valid survey. They had enough data, and we're able to draw the conclusion with 95% confidence interval that when you use you and because, the stuff after the because, it doesn't matter. Our brains are so trained from a lifetime of being advertised to that when we get the you, that's bringing the reader in.
[00:34:19] I'm now talking directly to Bob in Tallahassee who's interested in my book and I'm saying, "Bob, you're going to love this. I'm speaking right at you. And the reason you're gonna love it is because ..." What comes after the because doesn't matter. In our minds, oh well, there's a because, so what comes after it must be the validation. So it doesn't really matter and it works.
[00:34:44] That's why we have the you / because at the end. And that was a very long explanation, but I cannot stress enough how important it is if you want to get a description to convert down in that one-in-eight to one-in-ten range.
[00:34:59] Matty: And can you now read through the entire revised blurb just so everyone can hear the complete effect?
[00:35:06] Brian: Absolutely.
They altered the children’s genetics…
…and intend to control them.
But to what end?
Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn’t like it when people stick their noses in the company’s business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy learn to control her powers in time?
Or will her deadly abilities make matters worse?
George Millard has one job, to track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won’t be happy. He knows they’re headed to Philadelphia.
Can he get the job done before she becomes unstoppable?
You’ll love this deadly game of Snakes and Ladders, because of all the twists and turns.
Get it now.
[00:35:52] Matty: Excellent. Now, what material did you have to use in order to come up with that, because you didn't read the book, one assumes?
[00:36:03] Brian: That's correct. Yeah. Some days I'll do four or five of these, and obviously I don't have time to read four or five books.
[00:36:09] I have a methodology. I obviously read the original description. I get a lot of information from that. I will go through the reviews, if the book has been up long enough there will be good tidbits in the reviews. I look at the positive reviews ... well, that's not entirely true. I will read the one star reviews as well, because if there is some aspect that is universally not liked about the book then I will keep that out of the description, or if it is something that is, "From the description, I thought this was dark fantasy and it was high fantasy," well, to people that don't read fantasy, that may not be a big deal. They don't know the difference. But if that's a complaint, then I will make it clear in the you / because statement, You'll love this high fantasy, so that the people that get bent out of shape about that won't buy the book if they don't want to read high fantasy, if they want dark fantasy.
[00:37:12] And so I'm looking for ways to craft the description to meet expectations. And then often when working with clients, I will have to ask questions. And so maybe it's something that seems inane. But as I'm trying to craft the description, I want there to be some details, but I don't want them to be spoilers.
[00:37:38] So maybe instead of having a spoiler, I'll say, You have this character, Jane, what is her profession?" Why do you need that?" I don't really need it, but I'm looking for a little texture to make it a better read as far as your descriptions." So Jane, a nurse by day, a superhero at night, something like that.
[00:38:00] So I will ask the author questions and I'll just fire them off. And they usually respond, we use Facebook messenger. And so by combining the research through the original description, looking over the reviews, and if you only have three or four reviews, they could all be, "Great book. I loved it." Well, there's nothing there to help you. Go over to Goodreads.
[00:38:29] Maybe you have eight or ten reviews on Goodreads, and maybe there's one of them in there that is done by a person who likes to write three or four or five long paragraphs about why they love the book. In there, you'll find things you may not have thought were great hooks, but if you see two or three people mentioned, "Oh, the scene in the cave was magical," maybe I work something about a magical cave in there. I don't tell what happened, but I'm always looking for things that the end reader thought were great about the book because then other people who liked that aspect will be drawn in. So that's kind of what I do for my prep work. And then I sit down and try to think of what's a good opening hook.
[00:39:20] Matty: It's a good illustration of the fact that no one should consider their description set in stone. So it's not something that you do only when the book is about to launch. You maybe keep an eye on those aspects over the years, and you can always go back, maybe a description’s getting a little long in the tooth and you want to freshen it up a bit.
[00:39:42] Brian: Absolutely. I still do that with my descriptions. Henry Wood, Detective Agency, if people are interested, you can go to see Henry Wood, and if you click on the print version, the print version still has the original, albeit horrible cover on it, and the original description, the one that converted at one-in-30 to one-in-35. And I have left it there because I am more interested in having that up in a public space where people can go see it so they can then look at version three, which is the Kindle version, and see how vastly different they are. That's more valuable to me because I do these podcasts and I want to have an example. But if you're doing a search on Henry Wood Detective Agency, don't click on my ad. Don't make me pay to get you to read my description. Scroll down till you get to the organic one and click on that. But I digress anyway.
[00:40:41] Matty: Well, the other thing that I was thinking in terms of my evolving attitude toward when you work on a blurb, is that early on I would have thought, as I'm working on my novel, I'm going to have a little pad of paper next to me, and when I think of something that would be great for the blurb, I'm going to just jot it down. And then I evolved to a position that was, I should really finish the book, set it aside, let it stew for a little bit, and then write the blurb so I'm not deep, deep into the plot aspect of it. But I'm almost thinking another approach is at the moment when you have the idea for the book, you could almost draft the blurb then because you have this high level idea of what's exciting you about the book, generally what the tone is going to be, and the theme is going to be, not bogged down by all the plot aspects.
[00:41:31] Brian: That's brilliant. I think that's brilliant. I absolutely think that's brilliant. I am working on a a copywriting course for descriptions right now, and with your permission, I would like to use that idea because I think that is genius. At that point where you don't have all the details, you just have the 50,000-foot view of your book, that's when you write the description, and I think that'll help a lot of people. I was blown away. That was absolutely wonderful. So everybody listening to this, do that for your next book. Write that before chapter one.
[00:42:12] I mean, I do that with my fiction. I will write a chapter one, but it's rarely the chapter one that ends up being the first chapter in the book. I will often go back and when the book is done, I will go write a chapter before chapter one that is short, and it's almost more copywriting than prose, but it's designed to really be a hook so that when people are clicking the Look Inside, they will have a chapter that is just designed to be incredibly intriguing.
[00:42:46] Matty: That's great advice. This whole discussion has been packed full of great advice, great actionable advice for people to take advantage of. So Brian, let people know where they can find out more about you, your works, and your services online.
[00:43:00] Brian: I have two groups on Facebook, which is where most people can find me. I have Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author's Guide - Beta, and then Mastering Amazon Descriptions: An Author's Guide. The the ad group, when you go to sign up, it says that buying Mastering Amazon Ads is a requirement. I don't really enforce that too much. Mastering Amazon Descriptions, anybody can join and I tend to approve pretty much everyone, unless I look and all their groups that they belong to are sort of scammy, sell multilevel marketing type things. Most people, if you're authors, yeah, you're getting in. That's how you can find me.
[00:43:42] And then if you're interested in my services as a copywriter, I write descriptions for $120 a piece. You can simply just reach out to me and get on the list. I think I have seven people on the list right now.
[00:44:00] The other thing that I would mention is that I am in the process probably over the next week or so going to be launching a course where I will talk about many of the things that we discussed today though in greater detail. And I don't know the price point of that, but if you're somebody who enjoys taking a course and learning and having that resource there so you can go back and continue to study, then that will also be available.
[00:44:25] I will post it in my two groups and elsewhere, so that's how you find me and you can just reach out to me on Facebook. That's where I do all my communications. I don't check my emails very often. So, that's how you find me. Thanks for letting me plug my stuff.
[00:44:41] Matty: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been really interesting and helpful.
[00:44:46] Brian: Well, I'm glad. Thanks.
[00:03:21] Well, tomorrow came and I didn't want to do it tomorrow either, nor the next day, the day after that. I spent 60 days procrastinating and when I hit the 60th day, the little voice in my head said, "Are you kidding me? It's been 60 days. Just write this stupid description and hit Publish." Because admittedly I don't do much for launches because I figure I can sell the book with Amazon ads, so I've never worried about the launch. I just hit Publish and then go with it from there.
[00:03:56] Well, I got on, I wrote a horrible description for this book, hit Publish. I felt relief because I hated writing descriptions so much, and the little voice said, "Really? Do you feel proud of yourself? It took you 60 days to write that horrible description."
[00:04:13] And so the little voice and I discussed it at length and decided that my friend Sean Platt, who's on a podcast called the Self-Publishing Podcast, he in a prior life before becoming an author was a world-class copywriter. Since I knew one and I knew that copywriting was an art, I'd been in the marketing department of Geico, and so I knew copywriters. I thought, well, I'm just going to send him an email. I did. I told him the story I just told you, said, "Sean, I need to learn this skillset because I don't want to ever procrastinate for 60 days on something as easy as that."
[00:04:53] So he sent me a book and I read it. It was <Joseph> Sugarman's book, it's called Adweek <The Adweek Copywriting Handbook>, and then ironically, there's a subtitle, which is horrible copywriting, the subtopic goes on and on and on and on <The Ultimate Guide to Writing Powerful Advertising and Marketing Copy from One of America's Top Copywriters>. This book Adweek is considered the copywriting Bible among copywriters. It's a brilliant piece, and if you read only one book on copywriting this year, make it Mastering Amazon Descriptions by Brian Meeks, because a lot of that book isn't really relevant.
[00:05:26] And so I wrote a book entirely for the author but took one important piece and this I want to give credit to Sugarman, he said the point of the first line is to get them to read the second line. The point of the second line is to get them to read the third line, and the point of the third line is to get them to read a paragraph that tells them something about the product.
[00:05:54] And so his point was, and we're going to talk about this a lot today, is that you need to hook the reader. And so over the three and a half years that I have now been doing this, I have refined what an opening hook means. I have added in more hooks throughout the description, and I've gone from a description that would typically convert at one in 30 to 35 meaning if you pay for 30 to 35 clicks, you'll get one new reader. They might buy the book, or they might download on Kindle Unlimited, but on a $4.99 book, it'll take 30 to 35 paid clicks to capture a new reader.
[00:06:39] My first foray into it, I got that down to one in 12. And then I've continued to improve, and now my best ones are one in eight to one in 10 which is, you don't need a master's degree in math. If I ask authors, who are math phobes, and I say, would you rather pay for 30 clicks or eight to 10 clicks? They all get that answer correct. And so that's why we're here today is to discuss what it takes to make a description that will convert with only eight to 10 clicks.
[00:07:17] Matty: I thought that a way we could go about that is that last year I'd gotten in touch with you and I wanted to overhaul the descriptions for my Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, and so I thought it would be educational for me to read what I sent you for Snakes and Ladders, it's Lizzy Ballard Book 2, and then for you to discuss why you made the changes that you did in the revision you provided.
[00:07:40] Brian: Perfect. Let's do it.
[00:07:42] Matty: So here is the original one that I sent to Brian.
[00:07:45] Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally are on the run after the fatal game of rock, paper, scissors with Vivantem's head of research, Louise Mortensen and her enforcer, George Millard. They find themselves in the Red Rock Country of Arizona, and Lizzy finds a mentor in Phillip Castillo, a psychic counselor with his own dark past.
[00:08:05] While Lizzy works with Phillip to try to control her deadly ability, Millard is hot on her trail and Lizzy's power will be no defense against the weapon he has chosen.
[00:08:14] When Lizzy makes her way back to Philadelphia, Louise and George strike at Owen and in a bid to protect her dwindling band of allies, Lizzy takes the fight to Louise's turf.
[00:08:24] In this deadly game of snakes and ladders, will Lizzy be rewarded for her virtues or punished for her vices?
[00:08:31] Brian: Okay, so that's where we began, and I want to discuss a couple things right out of the gate.
[00:08:38] The first, this is a pretty common format for most people who write their own descriptions, what you have here are three paragraphs, relatively thick, and then the last sentence with a question mark. The first thing that I notice is that the opening paragraph is a giant block of text, and I want everyone to imagine Facebook because most people are on Facebook. And I want you to think about when you see a post from one of your friends and it has a giant block of text, do you read the post, or do you just hit Like or Love and move on. Most people hit Like or Love and in fact, I've studied this in a very controlled way in the 20 Books to 50K group. I've written many, many posts there.
[00:09:33] People will ask questions. I'll say, well, that looks like something that is maybe universally misunderstood, so I'll write a post about it. When I was doing that in early 2017, I would typically get, on a 500 to a thousand-word post, which is a lot for Facebook, but you know, sometimes the answers required a deep explanation, I would get 50 Likes or Loves and 12 comments.
[00:10:05] Now, one day in 2018 I decided to use the copywriting skills that I'd put towards descriptions and do it on a post. Well, that posts had maybe five-, 600 Likes and Loves and 300 comments. Now, instantly I knew I had a vehicle using Facebook groups where I could test out copywriting theory.
[00:10:36] So I've written many, many articles. I call them articles, but they're blog posts or on Facebook in that group. And my results range from 300 to my best ever is 588 comments, which is a staggering number, and that post in 24 hours amassed 1600 Likes and Loves. It was 484 words, which is a long post. Now, I've had them up to 1500 and because I use hooks and short bits interspersed with thicker paragraphs, the short bits being the hooks that link them together, I'm able to keep a person engaged so they don't stop reading, which is a hard thing to do in this age of scroll and Like and Love and move on and click and click and click. To get somebody to stop and read that many words in a single post is quite a feat.
[00:11:36] And so it just reinforces in my mind the power of copywriting. And so when we go back to your description, what I see is the person opening it up, seeing the giant paragraphs, and they're not giant, but in copywriting they are. And a lot of people won't read it. They won't even bother.
[00:12:01] And so the cover is getting us the clicks in most cases. Once they get here, we need to get them to read it, to give them some feel for the book, not give it away, but we want them to have enough sense that they are curious and want to read it. That's what we're going for.
[00:12:21] And so the opening line, the above-the-fold part that is on the page before you click Read more, let me read just that part from yours.
[00:12:35] Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally are on the run after their fatal game of rock, paper, scissors with Vivantem head of research Louise Mortensen and her enforcer, George Millard. They find themselves in the Red Rock County of Arizona, ...
[00:12:50] Okay. That's important. That's where it ends. It doesn't draw the reader in, and it's a lot of words. I don't know how many, I haven't counted, but in the version that I wrote for you, let me read the bit that's above the fold.
[00:13:10] They altered the children's genetics ...
[00:13:14] Then there's a blank line, and then the next line begins with an ellipse. I often misuse ellipses, and this is something that has come about over several years of doing this and testing and trying to improve upon one in 12. This is a big part because They altered the children's genetics ... Nobody is going to stop reading at that point. They are going to have to go to the next line because we're a curious species, and so: They altered the children's genetics and intended to control them. Ooh, well that begs the question, control them how? And then the next line is, But to what end? That's where they will be faced with the decision to click Read more or not and finishing with But to what end? as opposed to Red Rock County, Arizona, there's going to be more people that click the Read more. So we've got that person hooked on finding out what's going on.
[00:14:28] They liked the cover. They had, let me see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 words is all above the fold. It's very lightweight. There isn't an enormous amount of words. We've hooked them.
[00:14:46] So the next line, we want to give them a little bit about the book. You have Lizzy Ballard and her godfather Owen McNally. This is a common mistake. In most cases the last names aren't really necessary. It doesn't add information. They can learn the last names once they've bought the book. It's just two extra words and we are trying to trim out the words that aren't adding to the person's interest level.
[00:15:21] One thing that I want to emphasize is the way I format these is very intentional. The blank lines are just as important as the ones with the words on them because when you open them up, it's very lightweight on the page, and that's what we're going for.
[00:15:54] When they hit that Read more, we want them to see something that's going to be easy to read. Does that make sense?
[00:16:01] Matty: It does. Yes.
[00:16:02] Brian: Okay, well, very good. Let me continue reading. Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn't like it when people stick their noses in the company's business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy learn to control her powers in time?
[00:16:23] Okay, so I gave them a little bit of information. I put forth the name of the antagonist, which is a company in this case, I mentioned that they're an evil genetics firm, and then, Can Lizzy control her powers in time? Well, there at the end of that paragraph is another hook. Powers? What powers? What's that about? So they're going to continue reading.
[00:16:52] Well, the next slide I have is another hook. And sometimes I will have two or three between that first big paragraph and the next bit of information. In this case I have, or will her deadly abilities make matters worse? So now we have a sense that Lizzy has powers, we don't know what they are. They're serious powers because they're deadly. And perhaps the fact that she doesn't quite know how to control them may get her in trouble. So we don't really go into the details of what happens in the book, which is another mistake authors make. They often tell far too much about the plot and often give away spoilers.
[00:17:42] Matty: When I had drafted mine, I had been looking up the bestselling author blurbs for this type of book, and many of them were really surprisingly plot heavy and mainly all from traditional publishers.
[00:17:57] Brian: Yes. The traditional publishers, with the exception of one, because I wrote my first traditionally published description back in February, all the rest of them are crap. The just absolutely horrible. And I rewrote one for L. Ron Hubbard, his publisher, the book Battlefield Earth. You can go check it out. Admittedly my version ends after the second famous person blurb at the bottom. Normally I tell people that unless the person that wrote you that two sentence blurb is pretty famous, don't put it in there. It's just extra words. It's really not helping. But if it's Neil Gaiman, one was Kevin J. Anderson, and, the other one was Brandon Sanderson, and so I picked two of those and that's where I ended. The publisher then added a whole bunch of stuff at the end that's really not important.
[00:18:58] That makes it look heavy. I didn't do that, I just want to say, but I did get a very nice email from them three or four weeks after they had put up the new blurb and they had seen a significant spike in sales, which just means that they're getting conversions since changing, so they're happy with it. But the traditional wisdom is they just kind of ruin the book for you.
[00:19:21] And you mentioned something that I think is pretty common among authors. They will give the advice to newer authors, go see what the bestsellers are doing and do what they do. Which on the surface seems reasonable, but if everyone's doing it wrong and they're making $1 million a year in spite of their horrible description, the question that I always ask is how many sales are they leaving on the table? How much money is it costing them? And I actually did this analysis for my own books when I first wrote the descriptions using proper copywriting, after about a month, I went back and looked at the results and I'd seen across all my books, it had dropped to one in 12. This was when I was first starting.
[00:20:06] I'm better now, but one in 12 from one 30 is a significant improvement, and because I keep my data, I went back 12 months and I looked at my data, looked at the number of clicks, recalculated what I would have had for sales and KU downloads if I had done it 12 months earlier, and the total volume of net profit would have increased by $60,000 if I had done it 12 months earlier. I don't know that most authors are pessimists, but a lot of them, when I tell them that story, they're like, "Aw, that's awful."
[00:20:42] I didn't think about losing the 60,000 even once. I thought, "Oh, thank goodness I didn't wait five years." Because I could have been losing money that whole time. And so if people say, go do what the famous authors are doing, well, if the famous author is working hard, that's a good thing to do. But with the descriptions, no, they're horrible.
[00:21:09] Matty: I also wanted to say, apropos of the whole cramming plot points in there, is that not only was I following the advice of find bestselling authors and do what they're doing, but I realized that I also subconsciously was writing the blurb to appeal to the people who had read Book 1, which was Rock Paper Scissors.
[00:21:30] And so I think I had in my mind that I want to make sure that they know that the characters that I heard they really liked in Book 1 were still in Book 2. It's just another impetus for putting more plot detail in than you're saying is necessary.
[00:21:44] Brian: That's exactly right. And there are many reasons why authors do that.
[00:21:49] I tell people who want to learn this art, because one thing that I would like your listeners to take away from this is if I get you excited and you're thinking, "Wow, yes, I really would like to improve my conversions, so I should learn how to rewrite my description," don't think of it that way. You should be thinking, "Oh, I really want to learn copywriting because it will improve every aspect of my business."
[00:22:15] You don't use a skill just for your description. You use it on your emails to your reader list. You use it on your Facebook posts. If you have an author group or a reader group on Facebook where people come to discuss your books. You should always be writing in proper copywriting.
[00:22:34] And I tell everyone when you're on Facebook, even if somebody has just posted a picture of their new puppy, that's an opportunity to use proper copywriting. I only converse on Facebook in proper copywriting. If somebody reaches out to me with a DM, I use proper copywriting. If there's a puppy, I will write an opening hook: Every 500 years or so ... , and then if you hold shift down and hit enter twice--everybody who's listening, take note: shift and enter twice, that adds in your blank line--and then dot, dot, dot, so, Every 500 years ... a puppy comes along that is truly remarkable. And then another blank line. That is such a cute bit of fuzzy, and then another blank line. And if you're under the impression that you might post too many puppy pictures and annoy your Facebook friends, you would be mistaken. Keep them coming.
[00:23:39] And that is the way I would say it. And it will get all sorts of likes and loves from the people that see it more than the, "Aw, cute," stuff like that. So I'm always writing in copywriting. I've gotten very good at it and it's become natural because it is not natural. Authors, we write prose. Prose is not copy. In prose, you use complex sentences. You mix things up. You're painting pictures with words.
[00:24:12] In copywriting, it's short. It's punchy. You don't do the things that you do in prose because it's a different goal. You're not trying to paint this picture so much as you are just to get them to buy the book. And so I want us to think about that as I go back to our example.
[00:24:36] Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn't it like it when people stick their noses in the company's business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy control her powers in time?
[00:24:51] And so with the exception of the first sentence, Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run, it's all just beats.
[00:25:03] That's not to say you can't have a complex sentence in there. But you often will want to defer or err on the side of short and punchy because it gets to the point more quickly. Then we have a blank line and then, or will her deadly abilities make matters worse? Blank line. And then George Millard has one job. To track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won't be happy. He knows they're headed to Philadelphia.
[00:25:33] Now in this instance, I use the last name and I did it just to sort of break up the ... I don't like echoing, and that's not technically echoing, but I use Lizzy and Owen first names, and then George, I put the last name in there just because in that instance with that paragraph, I wanted it to be a little bit longer.
[00:25:59] So again, going back to my point about the appearance on the page is hugely important. So we don't want all short sentences. I have a description I'm going to rewrite today for a nonfiction book, and it's from an author who read Mastering Amazon Descriptions and he went too far towards the hooks.
[00:26:20] So top to bottom is all short lines. There aren't any paragraphs. And when you do that, what you have visually is a giant block of text. It's just a giant airy block of text because of all the black lines. But it's still visually a burden to look at. And so in this instance, I broke my rule about the last name. I put in George Millard to make it a little different. Add an extra word because I wanted a thicker paragraph. So: George Millard has one job. To track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won't be happy. He knows they're headed to Philadelphia.
[00:27:00] Matty: I also like George Millard there because George on its own, George has one job, doesn't sound at all threatening. Somehow George Millard has one job, sounds more threatening, like he's an entity, not just some arbitrary guy.
[00:27:14] Brian: Exactly. And also with the word George in my mind, I always think of Curious George. So there are times where I will break one of my rules because something makes me think of something else.
[00:27:30] And I'm always acutely aware of that. I just had this happen recently. There was a name, and the character's name was Caesar.
[00:27:38] And so in this instance, I wanted to use both names because when I saw Caesar in the opening part of the description, my mind immediately wondered, "Oh, is that Caesar Augustus, the emperor? Ooh, maybe it's a reference to Caesar from Planet of the Apes." Now, I might be the only person that went to the Planet of the Apes, but the fact that I paused during my reading of the description and my mind went down this different path, that's a bad thing. I want to eliminate that.
[00:28:15] And then I went further. Julio Cesar Chavez is a boxer. So just the word Caesar made me think of all these other Caesars that I knew, and I wasn't reading the description any anymore. So I look for instances that might be distracting. And so when I rewrote his description, I used the last name and there was no need to think about it because it didn't look like any other Caesars I knew.
[00:28:45] So anyway. Um, where did I leave off? Can he get the job done before she becomes unstoppable? So we've got George in there and we have another hook, which speaks back to her powers. And then I finish up with the call to action.
[00:29:06] Your description ends with, In this deadly game of snakes and ladders, will Lizzy be rewarded for her virtue or punished for her vice, which is a good hook, but you didn't ask them to buy the book. You always have to ask them to buy the book. And the reason I'll get to in just a moment. I want to read the way I asked them to buy the book.
[00:29:27] You'll love this deadly game of snakes and ladders because of all the twists and turns. Get it now.
[00:29:35] What I want people to understand, and this is especially for those that don't like calls to action, they don't like selling, they feel that it's dirty somehow, it's pushy. It's not. The call to action is a signpost.
[00:29:54] In advertising since we were born, since we were first plopped in front of a television set, our entire lives we had been exposed to advertising and the number of calls to action we have heard have made it so that we expect there to be a call to action. And when we get to it, it isn't the call to action that makes us take the action, it's that it tells us, " Yes, I've decided I want this book. Now it's okay to stop reading and take the action." It's that signpost.
[00:30:35] If you are driving down the street and you see a red octagon with a white band around it, even if it's too far away and it's through fog and you can't read the four letters on it, you still know it's a stop sign because we've seen so many of them.
[00:30:52] It's the same way with the call to action, and this is where I almost always use Get it now because it's short. Some people will say, Scroll up and to the right to one click and get Snakes and Ladders so you can get started reading today, or something horribly long. Scroll up to the right and one click so you can buy or download through Kindle Unlimited.
[00:31:23] Well, all of that is unnecessary. People that are in Kindle Unlimited, they know how to get their books downloaded for free. They do it four or five times a week. That's why they're paying the subscription for Kindle Unlimited. So telling them that information, is it adding anything? All it's doing is giving them a lot of words to read before they can go on and take the action.
[00:31:49] I don't want to slow them down. Now the paragraph that begins, You'll love this deadly game of Snakes and Ladders, because of all the twists and turns--this is very important. There are five powerful copywriting words, and this was research done by Copyblogger, a website devoted to the art of copywriting.
[00:32:13] they determined that you, because, instantly, now, and free are the five most powerful words in copywriting. I would agree. I would add that snarky is a pretty good word if you write satire, but they didn't research snarky.
[00:32:28] Matty: What were the five again?
[00:32:30] Brian: You, because, instantly, now, and free, so everyone should write those down and keep them in mind because they absolutely are powerful.
[00:32:41] Someone out there did one to know if you had because the way I've done it, you with a bit and then because and something after it, converted better than just using you or using some other sort of summation thing at the end as part of the call to action? Well, they did an ABC test. They had one thing at the end that finished without you and because, then they had two you and becauses. One you and because had like I did--because of all the twists and turns--something that made sense within the context of the ad copy or the marketing copy.
[00:33:24] The other one, the stuff that came after the because didn't really have anything to do with anything, was kind of throw away words. And what they found was both the B and the C, the you and because bits, converted vastly better than the A, the one they wrote that didn't have you and because, but the B and C didn't really have any difference.
[00:33:52] So they did a statistically valid survey. They had enough data, and we're able to draw the conclusion with 95% confidence interval that when you use you and because, the stuff after the because, it doesn't matter. Our brains are so trained from a lifetime of being advertised to that when we get the you, that's bringing the reader in.
[00:34:19] I'm now talking directly to Bob in Tallahassee who's interested in my book and I'm saying, "Bob, you're going to love this. I'm speaking right at you. And the reason you're gonna love it is because ..." What comes after the because doesn't matter. In our minds, oh well, there's a because, so what comes after it must be the validation. So it doesn't really matter and it works.
[00:34:44] That's why we have the you / because at the end. And that was a very long explanation, but I cannot stress enough how important it is if you want to get a description to convert down in that one-in-eight to one-in-ten range.
[00:34:59] Matty: And can you now read through the entire revised blurb just so everyone can hear the complete effect?
[00:35:06] Brian: Absolutely.
They altered the children’s genetics…
…and intend to control them.
But to what end?
Lizzy and her godfather, Owen, are on the run. Vivantem doesn’t like it when people stick their noses in the company’s business affairs. Their last encounter with the evil genetics firm nearly got them killed. Can Lizzy learn to control her powers in time?
Or will her deadly abilities make matters worse?
George Millard has one job, to track down Lizzy and Owen. If he fails, his boss won’t be happy. He knows they’re headed to Philadelphia.
Can he get the job done before she becomes unstoppable?
You’ll love this deadly game of Snakes and Ladders, because of all the twists and turns.
Get it now.
[00:35:52] Matty: Excellent. Now, what material did you have to use in order to come up with that, because you didn't read the book, one assumes?
[00:36:03] Brian: That's correct. Yeah. Some days I'll do four or five of these, and obviously I don't have time to read four or five books.
[00:36:09] I have a methodology. I obviously read the original description. I get a lot of information from that. I will go through the reviews, if the book has been up long enough there will be good tidbits in the reviews. I look at the positive reviews ... well, that's not entirely true. I will read the one star reviews as well, because if there is some aspect that is universally not liked about the book then I will keep that out of the description, or if it is something that is, "From the description, I thought this was dark fantasy and it was high fantasy," well, to people that don't read fantasy, that may not be a big deal. They don't know the difference. But if that's a complaint, then I will make it clear in the you / because statement, You'll love this high fantasy, so that the people that get bent out of shape about that won't buy the book if they don't want to read high fantasy, if they want dark fantasy.
[00:37:12] And so I'm looking for ways to craft the description to meet expectations. And then often when working with clients, I will have to ask questions. And so maybe it's something that seems inane. But as I'm trying to craft the description, I want there to be some details, but I don't want them to be spoilers.
[00:37:38] So maybe instead of having a spoiler, I'll say, You have this character, Jane, what is her profession?" Why do you need that?" I don't really need it, but I'm looking for a little texture to make it a better read as far as your descriptions." So Jane, a nurse by day, a superhero at night, something like that.
[00:38:00] So I will ask the author questions and I'll just fire them off. And they usually respond, we use Facebook messenger. And so by combining the research through the original description, looking over the reviews, and if you only have three or four reviews, they could all be, "Great book. I loved it." Well, there's nothing there to help you. Go over to Goodreads.
[00:38:29] Maybe you have eight or ten reviews on Goodreads, and maybe there's one of them in there that is done by a person who likes to write three or four or five long paragraphs about why they love the book. In there, you'll find things you may not have thought were great hooks, but if you see two or three people mentioned, "Oh, the scene in the cave was magical," maybe I work something about a magical cave in there. I don't tell what happened, but I'm always looking for things that the end reader thought were great about the book because then other people who liked that aspect will be drawn in. So that's kind of what I do for my prep work. And then I sit down and try to think of what's a good opening hook.
[00:39:20] Matty: It's a good illustration of the fact that no one should consider their description set in stone. So it's not something that you do only when the book is about to launch. You maybe keep an eye on those aspects over the years, and you can always go back, maybe a description’s getting a little long in the tooth and you want to freshen it up a bit.
[00:39:42] Brian: Absolutely. I still do that with my descriptions. Henry Wood, Detective Agency, if people are interested, you can go to see Henry Wood, and if you click on the print version, the print version still has the original, albeit horrible cover on it, and the original description, the one that converted at one-in-30 to one-in-35. And I have left it there because I am more interested in having that up in a public space where people can go see it so they can then look at version three, which is the Kindle version, and see how vastly different they are. That's more valuable to me because I do these podcasts and I want to have an example. But if you're doing a search on Henry Wood Detective Agency, don't click on my ad. Don't make me pay to get you to read my description. Scroll down till you get to the organic one and click on that. But I digress anyway.
[00:40:41] Matty: Well, the other thing that I was thinking in terms of my evolving attitude toward when you work on a blurb, is that early on I would have thought, as I'm working on my novel, I'm going to have a little pad of paper next to me, and when I think of something that would be great for the blurb, I'm going to just jot it down. And then I evolved to a position that was, I should really finish the book, set it aside, let it stew for a little bit, and then write the blurb so I'm not deep, deep into the plot aspect of it. But I'm almost thinking another approach is at the moment when you have the idea for the book, you could almost draft the blurb then because you have this high level idea of what's exciting you about the book, generally what the tone is going to be, and the theme is going to be, not bogged down by all the plot aspects.
[00:41:31] Brian: That's brilliant. I think that's brilliant. I absolutely think that's brilliant. I am working on a a copywriting course for descriptions right now, and with your permission, I would like to use that idea because I think that is genius. At that point where you don't have all the details, you just have the 50,000-foot view of your book, that's when you write the description, and I think that'll help a lot of people. I was blown away. That was absolutely wonderful. So everybody listening to this, do that for your next book. Write that before chapter one.
[00:42:12] I mean, I do that with my fiction. I will write a chapter one, but it's rarely the chapter one that ends up being the first chapter in the book. I will often go back and when the book is done, I will go write a chapter before chapter one that is short, and it's almost more copywriting than prose, but it's designed to really be a hook so that when people are clicking the Look Inside, they will have a chapter that is just designed to be incredibly intriguing.
[00:42:46] Matty: That's great advice. This whole discussion has been packed full of great advice, great actionable advice for people to take advantage of. So Brian, let people know where they can find out more about you, your works, and your services online.
[00:43:00] Brian: I have two groups on Facebook, which is where most people can find me. I have Mastering Amazon Ads: An Author's Guide - Beta, and then Mastering Amazon Descriptions: An Author's Guide. The the ad group, when you go to sign up, it says that buying Mastering Amazon Ads is a requirement. I don't really enforce that too much. Mastering Amazon Descriptions, anybody can join and I tend to approve pretty much everyone, unless I look and all their groups that they belong to are sort of scammy, sell multilevel marketing type things. Most people, if you're authors, yeah, you're getting in. That's how you can find me.
[00:43:42] And then if you're interested in my services as a copywriter, I write descriptions for $120 a piece. You can simply just reach out to me and get on the list. I think I have seven people on the list right now.
[00:44:00] The other thing that I would mention is that I am in the process probably over the next week or so going to be launching a course where I will talk about many of the things that we discussed today though in greater detail. And I don't know the price point of that, but if you're somebody who enjoys taking a course and learning and having that resource there so you can go back and continue to study, then that will also be available.
[00:44:25] I will post it in my two groups and elsewhere, so that's how you find me and you can just reach out to me on Facebook. That's where I do all my communications. I don't check my emails very often. So, that's how you find me. Thanks for letting me plug my stuff.
[00:44:41] Matty: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been really interesting and helpful.
[00:44:46] Brian: Well, I'm glad. Thanks.
Links
Mastering Amazon Descriptions (Amazon affiliate link)
Guinea Pig Bridge (Wondering why there's a link to the Guinea Pig Bridge video? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out!)
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