*laughs at her topic title and attempts to say it five times fast*

Book hooks... not to be confused the first few sentences of a story. No, I'm referring to those ten word or less catchy phrases on the front cover of books. We've seen tons of them. "May the odds be ever in your favor" is one of the more popularly known at present with all the Hunger Games movies coming out.

So I was wondering, what, in your opinion, would make a catchy front cover hook? And what are some of your favorite hooks you've seen?

At the moment, I'm writing a book about assassins turned heroes. I've juggled tons of hooks around in my head, but the one that seems to be sticking the most is "The greatest heroes have the darkest pasts."

What about you? Have you come up with a hook for your story?

"The greatest heroes have the darkest pasts"

I love that line! It just...it says so much in one sentence!

And how do I create a book hook...I really can't tell you since I've never done it before in my life. I am now motivated to go try. *prowls off*

You should try it, Ciela! Not all books have them, in fact, most don't. But I had a lot of fun coming up with a bunch of front cover hooks for my story. Some albeit a tad corny.

Reminded me of a certain Dr Seuss...

There is a method to most things, but in my opinion a book hook is one thing that doesn't have a method. Book hooks just have to be short, intriguing, and pertinent in some way to the book (not to mention they need to avoid contradicting the book...as have some I have seen ). My favorites have been pretty random.

Though the ones that aren't questions draw me in more than the ones that are, generally. I think the main reason is that they tend to ask questions like 'Will she find her true love?' My reaction is 'Yes. Next please.' In other words...if you must ask a question, don't ask one I know the answer to, or you aren't intriguing me.

It doesn't work that way with a statement I already know, though...your hook, for instance, Celestria. I am intrigued because I want to see how that concept will be explored, even if I already agree with it.

Does that make sense? I don't know.

It does make sense, Juliet. I agree with your point about questions vs. statements. Questions automatically have answers. Statements have questions you don't know about, which makes you want to read the book for answers.

I totally agree with you, Juliet! Questions, especially those romance questions, bug me. And in that sense, it seems to have the opposite effect. If I already know the answer, what's going to make me want to read the story? Where's the hook?

That being said, when I go book shopping or sometimes just cover shopping (odd hobby I know. It's probably an artist thing. ) I find myself drawn to ones with hooks. Especially the really good ones, because they promise something more, something deeper, than the cover or the back blurb can show me.

Birthmarked by Caragh M. O'Brien for example. "Those marked with a code will determine the future. One marked by a scar will unravel the past." That ancient wood cover with the entwining rusty ribbon already captures my attention as something different. But it's the hook that made me turn eagerly to the back cover and set it on a higher place in my 'to read' list.

Now I want to come up with some for my own projects. I shall have to think on this.

I've been thinking a lot about this for my book, too!
Urg, it's so hard to come up with these. Haha x)

Yeah.

I think my main strategy to get a hook for a particular book is to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and ponder the book. And then I write a lot of hooks – weird, random, sickeningly inane, pretentiously profound. Sometimes one of them is pretty good. And sometimes I just get struck with inspiration for the perfect hook half an hour after going to bed that night.

And sometimes it doesn't work and there's no good ones....

That's a really good idea.
I did that once for a novel.
It def does help.

Ooh, this makes me think of taglines... I know I've struggled with both for my various projects -- possibly because they tend to be vague until they are written, and most of them aren't written. I think I'll try it again, though.

I generally agree about the question vs. statement preference. Some questions are effective though, if they're vague enough. One example is, "She survived the Nazi desolation at great personal cost - will the contempt of her own people cost her even more?" It makes me wonder what the cost was, and why her people would treat her with contempt.

I've never tried making hooks for my books. Now I want to. XD

Some of you may recall that I sometimes have (metaphorically) violent reactions to blatantly manipulative advertising ... of the sort that screams "Read this book so you'll want to read these ten other volumes that are package exactly the same!" instead of "Read this book because it's a good book!" And I have to say that every book I can ever remember coming across (that I read any of) that had a "hook" like this prominently displayed on its cover gave every indication of being a clear case of manipulative marketing. (Some were good books regardless, mostly those dating from the "bad old days" when publishers would insist on covers, blurbs, and taglines that were only tangentially related to the book. When Ace published H. Beam Piper's Junkyard Planet, for example, they renamed it The Cosmic Computer and put on a cover, tagline, and blurb describing it as a computer-takes-over-the-world story, which could hardly be more wrong while still getting the names of characters, the planet, and the computer in question right.) So if you want me, and those like me, to buy your book ... think long and hard before you decide to put a "hook" on the cover.

I actually had another thought about this the other day: I think oftentimes, the 'hook' can (and sometimes should) be the title itself.
Because the title can grab someone's attention and interest (enough for them to want to buy it and read it) but it also leaves some good mystery as to what the book is about. Which can make someone want to read it even more.

I don't know...t'was just a thought. xD

That's very good point. It reminds me of a blog post Grace wrote a short while ago.

I would say that there is a material difference between Hooks and Titles, and Hooks are not necessarily unnecessary (ok, that word choice was awkward... ). Titles have more requirements to be good than a Hook does. A title needs to be short, and it needs to be memorable; and generally it also has a conventional title structure (statements and imperatives aren't common). A Hook, on the other hand, need only be reasonably short, hooking, and accurate.

* thoughtful * I know precisely what you mean, actually. I am more sensitive than most people to manipulative advertising. But I've developed a philosophy of 'keep the good ones and let the bad ones go', so it doesn't affect me as much anymore. I generally just laugh inwardly at it. I realize that this would be a problem for some, though.

I think that generally speaking, however, people like Hooks. They're appealing to most people. At least in a lot of target areas.

In some genres particularly, though, I think it would be good to skip the hooks. I know what genres in my head but I'm not recalling any names at the moment... Anyway, that's my take on it.

You brought up another good point, though. About accuracy. There are few things that irritate me more about a book than a hook (or any kind of description, for that matter) that misleads me about the book. I hate it. I know how hard it is to write a blurb or hook that is appealing and draws the reader, but – * tight grimace * It frustrates me to no end when they are inaccurate.

(Shortening the quote from my previous comment.)



"Keep the good ones and let the bad ones go" presumes knowledge of the book beyond the marketing, though ... and in a bookstore, and even more so on something like Amazon, the point at which I've decided to either buy or not buy the book is generally a bit before I can definitely tell if a book is a "good one" or not.

I've also thought of another way of putting my objection to what we're here calling "hooks." Titles, cover illustrations, blurbs, quotes from reviews, and nearly everything else on and inside the cover is intended to sell the book. A "hook," on the other hand, is intended to sell hype that will then sell the book. And my "vehement reaction to manipulative marketing" might be put more picturesquely as an "allergy to hype."


Publishers---and advertisers in general---use "hype" because it sells. I don't deny its effectiveness; I object to advertising that tries to convince me to buy something whether it's something I want or not, instead of helping me to make an informed decision as to whether it's something I want or not.


Fortunately, in this modern age of Internet customer reviews, if a publisher tried the sort of bait-and-switch I mentioned being common at one time (in the '70s?), we'd learn about it really quick.

*Chuckles* That made me laugh, Juliet. I know exactly what you mean.



That is intriguing, Celestria.

I can't think of ones that I like now, my mind has gone completely blank. Typical!

I agree with you to an extent. I have seen taglines which are what you have just described. But that doesn't really mean that they are all like that, or that they all have to be.

For instance, the tagline 'An Epic of Epic Epicness' tells me nothing about the story. I don't even know what the tagline was for, though I know it was used on something or other (the fact that I don't remember what it was for illustrates how little it told me about the story). The fact is, I don't care if the guy who was hired to market the thing thinks it's going to be epic. I just want to know if I'm going to think it's epic.

However, one of the taglines used for the animation 'Chicken Run' was quite the opposite. It was 'Escape or die frying', and it says a good deal about the movie, rather than hype or marketing. It encapsulates the plot (which is, in fact, about chickens who must escape of die frying). It hints at the fact that the movie is a spoof by itself being an alteration of a common catch phrase. It also is funny, if you happen to like that kind of humor – which is good, since the movie is full of it, and if you like the tagline you have a higher probability of enjoying the movie.

I don't think taglines should always encompass the same elements, but I do think the best ones always tell you something about the actual story. I could give more examples of ones that do, in my opinion, but I risk boring y'all.

If they went too far with it, yes. But I've seen some instances of where they... er, warped the story in an attempt to make it more engaging in blurb form, and apparently it wasn't too newsworthy. It just frustrates me.

Mine is the one in my siggy: in a world without superheros, who will fight against the forces of evil?

Sometimes book hooks can be very misleading, like the one for Steelheart: "His weakness is their greatest strength." I mean, once you've read the book you're like, what the heck?

And there actually is a Dr. Suess thing about a book hook.

We took a look
We saw a Nook
On his head
He had a hook
On his hook
He had a book
On his book
was "how to cook."

We saw him sit
And try to cook.
He took a look
And the book on the hook

But a Nook can't read,
so Nook can't cook.
SO....
What good to a Nook
Is a hook cook book?

This isn't limited to taglines, either... I've seen some blurbs that should be taken out and shot. If you can't write copy that makes the people want to read your book without being inaccurate, maybe you should reconsider whether your book is interesting enough for you to be selling it. And if you can... do.

I was restraining myself from posting this.