How to Write a Nonfiction Book Description That Works on KDP

Many authors treat the book description as the last chore of the upload. They finish the book, open their Amazon KDP account and type something into the box in ten minutes.

I understand the impulse. After months of writing chapters, a 150 words book description feels like nothing. In the beginning of my self-publishing career, I gave little thought to book descriptions.

That book description box does more selling than any other part of your listing. A buyer reads your description before they read a word of your book. If it doesn’t tell them why the book should matter to them and why they should read it, they click on the next title.

Here’s how to write one that earns the click and the purchase.

Start with what the buyer sees

Amazon shows the first few lines of your book description and hides the rest behind a Read more link. A buyer who isn’t hooked in those lines won’t click it. Your first sentence carries the whole listing.

Here’s a first sentence I made up, but you’ve probably read one like it:

“This book is the result of more than twenty years of my experience working with clients in a wide variety of industries, and it covers many of the topics that I believe will help anyone who wants to become a better leader.”

That’s 42 words, and every one of them is about the author. This is a snoozer.

Here’s the repair:

“Your team stopped listening to you six months ago. This book shows you how to get their attention back.”

That’s 18 words. All I did was turn the sentence around to focus on the reader and name the problem they already feel.

The repair leaves out the twenty years, the industries, and the topics. Those can wait. A buyer cares about your experience once they believe you understand their problem.

Five things to get right

1. Write to one reader. Picture the person who needs your book most. Who are they, and what keeps them stuck? Describe their problem in the words they would use. A description aimed at everyone in business lands with no one in particular.
2. Say what the reader will be able to do. List three to five results in short bullets and start each one with a verb. KDP lets you use formatting such as line breaks, bolding, and italics, so the results are easy to scan on a phone. Keep each bullet to one line.
3. Keep it short. KDP gives you 4,000 characters, and that count includes any formatting code you add. That’s the most room you get. You don’t have to use it. Amazon’s own help page suggests aiming for a paragraph of about 150 words, with sentences a reader can scan.
4. Give your credentials in one sentence. Name the experience that qualifies you to solve this reader’s problem and put it near the end. Save the full biography for your author page.
5. Leave out what Amazon won’t allow. Don’t include your website, email address, phone number, or other contact information. Don’t paste in reviews, quotes, or testimonials, which belong in the Editorial Reviews field instead. Don’t ask readers to leave a review, and skip anything time-sensitive, like tour dates.

Proofread your book description 

For years, I proofread every expert report before it went to an attorney. One pediatric nursing expert spelled the defendant physician’s name three different ways in a single report. I caught it. Then I wondered what else was wrong that I couldn’t see. I never sent her another case.

A buyer reads your description with the same attention to detail. A typo in the part they can see makes them wonder about the 200 pages they can’t.

Compose your book description on a Word  document and run it through spell check. Read the description aloud. Print it out and read it again with a pen in your hand. Then give it to someone who hasn’t read your book — ideally someone outside your family. Can they tell you what the book will do for them after one reading? If they can’t, rewrite the description.

Check the live page on your phone after the book goes up. KDP won’t show double or multiple spaces you type between words, and a description that looked tidy in the box can look cramped on the page. You can rewrite it and edit it at any time to polish it.

Your book description is the first page of your book that anyone reads.