S2/E33: Writing Killer Cover Copy by Elana M. Johnson

The author of this week’s selection, Writing Killer Cover Copy primarily writes sweet romance under her own name Elana Johnson and inspirational romance under the pen name Liz Isaacson. This title is part of a series for Indie authors, which she publishes under her full name Elana M Johnson. Quoting her website: “A USA Today Bestselling and Amazon Kindle All-Star Author, Elana writes young adult and adult contemporary romance. She is well-known for her young adult dystopian romance series Possession, Surrender, Abandon, and Regret, published by Simon Pulse (Simon & Schuster). She writes clean beach romance [with titles like] Hawthorne Harbor Second Chance Romance series, the Brides & Beaches Romance series, the Clean Billionaire Beach Club Romance series, She runs a personal blog on publishing and is a founding author of the QueryTracker blog, a co-founder of The League of Extraordinary Writers, and a co-organizer of WriteOnCon. She is a member of SCBWI, RWA, and NINC and a popular speaker for libraries, teens, and writer’s conferences across the United States. To contact Elana to speak at your event, please see her contact page.” She has a lot of brass tacks tips in this book (e.g. her 3-part formula for writing taglines, the optimal length of a tagline — less than 150 characters — so that they fit on Amazon ad copy, best ways to test cover copy). Like usual I’m not going to be able to capture all that this book offers, but here are my… THREE THINGS 1 You Do You. While Johnson shares what worked for her in this book, she does so with the strong caveat that it’s critical that you adapt what you learn in her book to your own personality, style of writing, genre, price point, budget, etc. Trying to be someone else or to replicate someone else’s marketing system is a recipe for disaster. 2 The Skeleton of Cover Copy. With today’s shorter attention spans, you have to get the bones of your cover copy down and you have to do it fast. Think of this as the checklist that you start drafting your cover copy and the checklist that you make sure has been met when you finish your final revisions of the cover copy: * Hook – something that captures the imagination, intrigues, or asks a question right away* Quick(!) Description – You do not want to tell the whole story or encapsulate the themes and character arcs....

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