The Back Cover Synopsis in the Backlist-driven world

We used to sell books by telling you how exceptional the story was. The whole back cover synopsis pushing you to invest in the character journey and atmosphere of the story contained within. Selling you on the author was a secondary concern, because the author was an invisible presence nine times out of ten. Your primary relationship was with the book, the bookseller, and the story, not the person who wrote it.

Then blogs came along, and then Facebook, and then Twitter. YouTube and TikTok and Tumblr and Snapchat and Patreon and gods know how many others that I’m ignoring in that list. Find an author and like their work? Odds are you’ll be following them on one platform or another, the first step in a long-term relationship.

Which raises an interesting question for marketing books: do we now sell readers on the author and the contents of the book? Make them sound like the kind of author that needs to be followed and engaged with beyond this one story?

Inviting a long-term commitment from a reader might not sell the current book as efficiently as the traditional conventions around the back cover synopsis, but the long-term relationship sells books in two directions: through the backlist, as readers realise there’s more there; and in the future releases the author may make. 

Selling the individual book is a solid choice in the velocity model of publishing, where everything focuses on the now, now, now, but the transition to backlist-focused business models makes the second option far more palatable.