Friday, January 22, 2010

Tag! You're it!

Another peruse of the taglines of epublishing. Do you know what I see? Tags are not everybody’s cup of tea. A lot of publishers don’t even have them. Now that I am on the trail…. I miss them.

As a writer, I realize the difficulty of selling a 50K manuscript with one teasing sentence, maybe two. As a reader, a consumer, a shopper, I’m starting to see the value.

Don’t get me wrong. I'm still more visual than verbal, and the cover draws me first. But the tag and the cover can work in perfect harmony to compel me to take the ever important next step. Read the dang blurb….

My next Tag! You’re it! evaluation is a book from Cobblestone Press. Another eye-popping cover on the book titled A Fireman for Christmas by Piper Denna

Here’s her tag:

Every fireman knows the value of a controlled burn...

Holy crap that’s an awesome tag! It’s clever, it’s suggestive, it’s true. I went on to read the blurb, and learned there probably isn’t thing one in her book about fire fighting, but who cares!

What a wonderful lesson. I’ve been truly trying to digest my stories onto the head of a pin and explain them in the tag. Not necessary. Let’s see – I love analogies. I think the tag is the hors d’oeurve before an elegant meal. It doesn’t need to contain the indgredients of every dish on the menu. It just has to compliment the main meal and make you hungry for more.

See ya next time!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, Gem, glad you like the tag. I have to confess, I did have a little help from a CP -- Jasmine Black. She deserves more credit for it than I do. :)

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  2. Thanks Gem and Piper. I might have helped with the tag line, but the story speaks for Piper's writing. I just love this story. And I think it also shows how valuable CPs are. I don't know how anyone writes without them. My CPs rock.

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  3. Thanks for stopping ladies! In this biz nobody can go it alone . Good luck with sales . Gem

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