How to Write Book Descriptions That Sells | Free Self-Publishing Course | Video #15

About this video

Sean teaches how to write a book description that combines SEO, copywriting and formatting, noting it can also be adapted as back-cover text. For SEO, he says a description should be over 500 words, include the keywords found in research at least once and more if possible, and repeat the main keyword roughly every 100 words while sounding natural and not keyword-stuffing. For copywriting, he urges power words: ‘simple’ makes a ‘3-step system’ sound easier, ‘discover’ feels like stumbling on a secret compared with ’learn,’ which he associates with school and hard work, and stronger emotional phrasing — e.g. ‘Don’t you hate that stubborn love handles that you never can seem to get rid of?’ — beats a weak question by restating and enlarging the reader’s problem and relating to them. For formatting, he says avoid plain text and use bold, larger H2 headings and bullet points, using Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur formatting tool to generate HTML to paste into KDP without learning code. His template has five sections: a short, eye-catching headline to keep readers reading; an expertise section explaining why to listen to the author; a benefits section; a selling paragraph using emotional adjectives, power words and bullet points while teasing curiosity rather than giving answers away; and a call to action explicitly telling readers to buy. He walks through a description for ‘The Procrastination Cure’ as an example that follows the template, with bolded pain points and benefits, borrowed credibility, and a closing instruction to scroll up and click Buy Now.

Key takeaways

• Make the description over 500 words for SEO, use researched keywords at least once, and repeat the main keyword roughly every 100 words naturally without keyword stuffing
• Use power words deliberately: Sean contrasts ‘discover’ with ’learn’ and ‘simple 3-step system’ with ‘3-step system’ to make benefits feel easier and more exciting
• Format for visual pop with bold text, H2 headings and bullet points, using Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur tool to generate the HTML for KDP
• Follow Sean’s five-part template: headline, expertise/credibility, benefits, selling paragraph with bullet points, and an explicit call to action to buy
• In the selling paragraph, tease curiosity instead of revealing content — e.g. naming a number of reasons or tips without listing them — and restate the reader’s pain point in stronger emotional language

Episode details: published April 1, 2020 · 10:07 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Sean Dollwet’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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