What it costs
What blurb and back-cover copy costs — and what you're actually buying
A professional blurb costs £100–£350. That looks high per word and is not high per effect: a blurb is 150 words that decide whether the book is bought, and knowing which 150 out of 90,000 is genuinely hard.
What good looks like
- Written to your genre's conventions, not to a general formula
- Withholds the ending
- Names the reader's problem or promise in the first line
- Two or three versions to test
A separate free preview: A free outside view of your own pages
A separate writing preview; it does not design, format, export, print or publish the book. Send up to 5,000 words. You get back what the draft appears to be doing to somebody who wasn't there when you wrote it, the strongest thing in it named, the exact place a reader starts to drift, and three revision priorities in order.
A separate writing preview; it does not design, format, export, print or publish the book. An AI-assisted read of your own pages. Not a human edit, not a line edit, and not a scored report.
What you are actually buying
A blurb is a sales document of about 150 words whose job is to make a specific reader want this book. Genre conventions do most of the work, and they are not interchangeable.
Why it costs that
A blurb is short, high-leverage and genuinely hard, and a copywriter is being paid for judgement rather than words — knowing which 140 words of a 90,000-word book create the desire to read it, in the conventions of your genre. That is why the rate looks high per word and is not high per effect.
How to spend less
Write the five-sentence version yourself first — who, what they want, what stands in the way, what it costs, and the question left hanging — and take that to a copywriter. Reacting to a draft is faster for them and cheaper for you. And test whatever you end up with on three people who read your genre and have not read your book.
What good looks like
- Written to your genre's conventions, not to a general formula
- Withholds the ending
- Names the reader's problem or promise in the first line
- Two or three versions to test
Questions to ask them
- Have you written blurbs in my genre?
- How many versions do I get?
- Will you write the Amazon description too, which is a different job?
Red flags
- One version, take it or leave it
- A blurb that summarises the plot
- No knowledge of your genre's conventions
Honestly
Authors write terrible blurbs about their own books, and the reason is structural rather than a lack of skill: you know too much, so you cannot see which detail is the hook, and you will not withhold the ending because you are proud of it.
About Your Book Pro
Your Book Pro is a book-writing platform built in Britain. Start with an idea, notes, half a draft, a podcast, or a finished manuscript, and use our purpose-built AI tools for planning, feedback, editing, proofreading, cover designs, and to create print-ready files. Writing is totally free: you can type, upload or speak your book as much as you like, and use only the editing tools you need with Plus, or go unlimited with Pro.
Produce world-class drafts at the fraction of the cost of hiring a human editorial team.
Every account starts with 1,000 welcome credits, and a plain export of your own words is free.
These prices are here to be used, not to sell you something — brief a freelancer with them, sanity-check a quote, or work out what you actually need. Where Your Book Pro changes the arithmetic, the page says so; where it does not, it says that too.
Authors write terrible blurbs about their own books, and the reason is structural rather than a lack of skill: you know too much, so you cannot see which detail is the hook, and you will not withhold the ending because you are proud of it.
What it costs
| What you are buying | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standalone blurb | £100–£350 | UK copywriting market |
| Blurb within a launch package | Usually bundled | Common practice |
CIEP suggested minimum rates effective 1 March 2026; Books.by; publishing.co.uk; The Ghostwriters Agency. Dated 9 September 2026.
Draft your blurb
Email me my free review linkQuestions people ask
- How much does a blurb writer cost?
- £100–£350 for a book blurb. It is one of the better-value purchases in self-publishing because a blurb is short and high-leverage.
- How long should a blurb be?
- 100–200 words for most fiction, up to 250 for non-fiction where the reader wants specifics.
- Is the blurb the same as the Amazon description?
- Nearly the same text, formatted differently — the online version needs a stronger first line and shorter paragraphs.
- Can I change the blurb after publishing?
- Yes, on all the main platforms, within hours. It is the easiest thing to test after launch.