Writer's Wednesday: Is a blurb part of the story?
In my review of The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet , I noted that I started listening without reading (or re-reading, given how long I'd had the book on hold at the library) the blurb. The way that affected my reading experience made me realize that our blurbs aren't just important for marketing--they are actually part of how most people read our books. That understanding has me working on a better sense of what and how to write the blurbs (book-jacket summary) to improve not just the likelihood that the person looking at it will buy the book, but also their experience of reading the book. Of course, all the holiday stuff distracted me from this question, so it's taken me until now to write this post, and precious little thinking has taken place. But here are the things I think I get from reading a blurb: The main character's name and something about him/her--life circumstances, if not personality. Setting. I presumably know genre in the broadest sense, at least, but...