Tip O'Day for Authors #153

Guest blogger Surya Sunder Dey, a thriller author and avid reader, on what helps her choose a book to buy.

I mostly choose books from the short descriptions one finds on the dust jacket. In this regard, I'd say tastes differ. A reader of one genre might find novels of another genre tedious, if she is solely going by the blurb. Now, if you turn this thing around, you can say writing a very good short description might be one of the important elements of selling a title. E-books sold online also come with these descriptions.

A good story always makes the reader ask, "What happens next?" I'd hasten to add that this is a very personal idea and might be wrong from more than one angle. Yet when I read those Ludlumesque novels (there are other authors catering to the fans of this genre, but somehow Robert Ludlum manages to stand as a landmark for this type of story), I can hardly let my back touch the backrest of the chair. My point here is that this element of "what happens next" should be there in that brief description.