Good blurbs and query letters are essential in getting the attention of potential readers, agents, and publishers. 

You also need them if you’re entering the writing contest coming up in August, so our focus for the July meeting is to work on these important, but not as simple as you think, elements. We’re going to spend time at the July meeting working on these two important components of the entry.

Along with the book cover, your back cover blurb (or the one that is featured on Amazon) is your introduction to potential readers. Between the two, they have to be eye-catching and offer the reader a hook into buying your book. Or, at least, opening it to the first page. 

As for the query letter, that needs to have the right tone and make an agent or publisher want to read your pages and, ideally, the whole book. The blurb is part of the query letter, but so is your greeting, how you present yourself, and the professional image you present.

Whether you’re submitting for the contest or not, you still need to sharpen these skills. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. Working in groups, we will try to help each other write the perfect blurb for your book or book idea.

The meeting will include:
 

“What do you mean, you lost it?” I asked.

“My computer. The hard drive crashed. I can’t get to anything.”

“You don’t have a back-up system?”

Silence.

Then he said, “I know I should, but I never set something like that up.”

Now, frankly, I wanted to say to him that his dumb ass deserved having to re-type the manuscript from his hard copy. If he had one. Instead, I told him I would email him the last copy he sent to me.

His response? “But I’ve made changes since I sent you that version.”

I said, “Well, you can either make those same changes from my version or you can start from scratch. Which do you think will be less work?”

Then I said, “Wait a minute. You sent the manuscript to me as an email attachment. You should still have that in your sent emails.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

Which got me to thinking. First, you’re playing with fire if you haven’t set up a back-up protocol on your computer. For myself, every file I have ever created exists not only on a primary external drive, but is backed up every day to two (yes, two) other external drives plus to a secure back-up provider in the cloud. My computer can crash or my house can burn down, and I will be able to recover all my data.

Now, you may not be as finicky as me about my data, so at least invest $20 in a flash drive and every time you finish a writing session, save a copy to the flash drive and keep it away from the computer. If you have a fireproof file cabinet or safe, keep it there.

Plan B? Email each version of your manuscript to yourself. Every time you finish a writing session.

You’ll save yourself a very painful experience because of this immutable fact: Eventually every hard drive dies. Don’t let your hard work die with it.

Matt

I have to add a comment here.When you are writing, back up frequently. Even though WORD has a timed backup, it isn’t saving it to a file you can easily recover if the computer crashes. I know several writers who lost chapters because they didn’t have a saved copy and the computer crashed. — Rene