Writers in the Storm

by Ellen Buikema

You find yourself perusing books online, at a bookfair, or store and are drawn to a book because of an interesting cover. Then a particular phrase on the cover really piques your curiosity. That’s the magic of a well-written tagline, the line created to make readers stop, and say, “Oh! I need to read this.”

The tagline captures your story’s heart yet leaves your reader curious and wanting to dive into the story. The best ones make a lasting impression.

What is a Tagline?

A tagline is a short sentence or phrase that summarizes your story’s essence. Its job is to grab the readers’ attention. Think of it as what you’d include on your movie poster. The movie made from your book.

The tagline can become permanently entwined with your book’s identity. It stays with the readers, creating a strong emotional association with your story.

For example, in A Dark and Hollow Star, the tagline “Nothing is more dangerous than a faerie tale.” is simple, but immediately shows the reader that the characters are facing high-stakes challenges. It hints at the tension to come.

A tagline has multiple uses. It’s on book covers, social media posts, book blurbs, and ads—great for marketing purposes.

Here’s a guide to help you compose a tagline.

1. Start with the Soul of Your Story

Understand the heart of your novel.

• What is the primary theme?
• Emotional journey?
• Main conflict that weaves them together?

Your tagline should give an idea of what readers can expect—the heartbeat of it.

For example, The Hunger Games tagline “May the odds be ever in your favor.” lets the reader know that the stakes for the characters are high, hinting at danger. It’s an interesting combination of ominous and hope.

To find your tagline, consider What is—

• My emotional promise to the readers?
• Character’s stake?
• Emotional response you expect from the reader?

Find the story’s essentials and concentrate on what makes it affect the readers.

2. See if your Tagline is in Your Story

Your tagline may be lurking in your book, in dialogue! Sometimes, the best tagline is something your characters already say.

The Hunger Games tagline was borrowed from something Effie Trinket said in the story’s dialogue: “May the odds be ever in your favor” which is a big part of the world-building. Her statement weaves the tension of the Games with the Capitol’s fierce control. Hearing that line conjures images of the characters and their struggles to survive.

Check your manuscript. Is there a repetitive phrase in the dialogue? Something that summarizes your themes? Your Muse may have magically placed a great tagline directly into your manuscript.

3. Keep It Reasonably Short

Compose something memorable that provokes curiosity or feeling in as few words as possible. Every word should be purposeful.

In Easy Rider the tagline "A man went looking for America, and he couldn't find it anywhere" helps capture an important cultural shift.

Big Little Lies has the tagline ‘Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal – a tad long, but tells you about the book’s theme while hinting at the darker undertones.

Find a balance. Too short and your readers may be confused. Too long, and punch is gone. Keep it to the point, but enough for readers to want to know more.

4. Focus on Emotion

Unlike the logline, the tagline is a feeling, not a summary. Readers want to know how your book will affect them emotionally. Will it scare them? Leave them at the edge of their seats? Make them cry?

For instance, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: "Chandresh Christophe Lefevre is a magician, and the circus is his greatest illusion." This sets a mysterious, magical tone that captures the book’s core.

Consider what makes your novel emotional and let that help to create your tagline.

5. Use Active Language to Create a Feeling of Urgency

A great tagline uses active, vibrant words to draw readers in, creating a sense of urgency. It should create a need to know more and not miss out.

For example, the tagline for Before I Go to Sleep is “What if you couldn’t remember your past?” brings up several questions. Who is she really? What happened to her to cause her memory loss? Can she trust anyone around her? The reader needs to know what happened.

Consider the words that will get your readers turning those pages. Use verbs that imply action, danger, or mystery. Create anticipation.

6. Experiment With Structure and Rhythm

Sometimes, the way a tagline sounds is just as important as what it says. A great tagline often has a rhythm or balance that makes it pleasing to read – and impossible to forget.

Consider The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: “You don’t know her. But she knows you.” The rhythm and parallel structure make it memorable.

Play with contrast, repetition, or symmetry. A well-structured tagline can remain with a reader like a song’s lyric.

7. Test Your Tagline

Ask your beta readers, critique partners, and friends to check them out and give their opinions. Eyes-on is a good thing and can lead to some interesting results.

Sample questions you can ask:

• Does this tagline pique your curiosity?
• Does the tagline capture the story’s tone?
• Would it make you want to read more than if the cover didn’t have the tagline?
• Is this tagline snappy?
• If you saw this tagline on a book cover, would you pick it up and want to read it?

Where to Place a Tagline on a Book

Front Cover

• Typically placed on the front cover, near the title or at the top or bottom of the cover.
• This will attract attention and entice potential readers as they peruse books.

Back Cover

• Back cover taglines are often above the book's blurb.
• This can reinforce the book's theme or tone after the reader has been drawn in by the cover art and title.

Considerations

• Design Compatibility: Complement but not overwhelm the cover design. Watch for overcrowding. Busy visuals are distracting and may turn the reader off.
• Readability: Color and font size should make the tagline easy to read.

By strategically placing the tagline, you can enhance the book's appeal and increase the chances of capturing a reader's interest.

Capturing the spirit of your book in a few words will take time, so don’t stress if the perfect words don’t come to you right away. Following these seven steps will help.

Just for fun, try a tagline generator! Here’s one that you don’t have to use sign-in to access. I played around using the same key words with different tones and received some interesting taglines!

Have you written taglines? Do you have a favorite one? If you’ve used a tagline generator, what was your experience? Do you feel that taglines help with marketing your work?

* * * * * *

About Ellen

Author, speaker, and former teacher, Ellen L. Buikema has written non-fiction for parents, and The Adventures of Charlie Chameleon chapter book series with stories encouraging the development of empathy—sprinkling humor wherever possible. Her Works in Progress are The Hobo Code, YA historical fiction and The Crystal Key, MG Magical Realism/ Sci-Fi, a glaze of time travel.

Find her at https://ellenbuikema.com or on Amazon.

Top Image by Mircea Iancu from Pixabay

or Just Another Sparring Partner?

by Susan Watts

The name most often invoked in those conversations is the Amazon A11 algorithm, the system Amazon uses to rank, display, and recommend books within its marketplace. It determines which titles appear in search results, category rankings, and recommendation feeds based on customer behavior.

Amazon does not publish a detailed manual explaining exactly how it works yet publishing analysts and retail observers have studied its patterns closely enough to recognize how visibility behaves over time.

One distinction has become clear.

The Amazon A11 algorithm is not a publishing algorithm designed to evaluate art. It is a retail algorithm designed to evaluate buying behavior. That difference shapes everything that follows.

Amazon’s objective is not to reward literary depth or artistic ambition. Its aim is to show customers products they are likely to purchase and enjoy. Once that truth settles in, the system feels less like an invisible adversary and more like a sparring partner, revealing how well your book aligns with shopper expectations.

Let’s examine three persistent myths that continue to circulate around the Amazon A11 algorithm.

Myth #1: There Is a Secret Code Only Insiders Understand

The idea that a hidden formula exists and is accessible only to elite authors is strangely comforting. If the system is mysterious, then visibility problems must be beyond our control. Frustration feels justified.

But long-term observation of Amazon’s retail platform suggests something far more practical. Visibility tends to follow two pillars: relevance and performance. Relevance concerns the alignment between what your book signals and what a reader is searching for. Performance concerns what readers actually do once they encounter your book.

Category accuracy, keyword clarity, genre signals on your cover, and blurb precision all contribute to relevance. Performance is determined by how readers interact after clicking and buying, including their continued engagement, series advancement, and overall satisfaction preventing product returns.

For any author building a long-form series, this becomes immediately tangible. When the first book clearly communicates its tone, its level of danger, its emotional intensity, and the conventions it embraces, the right readers recognize themselves in that promise. They click because it feels familiar. They buy because it matches what they were seeking. They continue because the experience fulfills the expectation that drew them in. When those signals blur, even strong storytelling struggles to overcome the mismatch.

There is no secret code. There is positioning. Your book’s position in the marketplace isn’t random, and it’s not fixed. With deliberate thought and strategy, you can look at how your book is currently presented, make purposeful changes, and improve how clearly it aligns with reader expectations.

Myth #2: Amazon Is Punishing Independent Authors

When rankings decline after a launch spike, the experience can feel personal. You invested time, discipline, and emotional energy. Watching that work drift downward can feel like judgment.

Yet the Amazon A11 algorithm does not measure effort. It measures response.

A launch period gives Amazon concentrated data. If conversion remains strong after the initial surge, visibility stabilizes. If conversion weakens, exposure shifts toward products that are currently showing stronger buyer behavior. This is how retail systems allocate attention.

In martial arts, when a technique fails repeatedly during sparring, the exchange reveals an issue with timing, distance, or structure. This allows for adjustments and corrections to be made to fix the problems.

When visibility declines, the question becomes whether the book is converting the traffic it receives. If readers are arriving but not purchasing, the signals may need refinement. If they purchase but do not continue, the story may need strengthening.

Myth #3: Reviews Are the Primary Ranking Lever

Reviews matter, but not in the exaggerated way many authors assume. Their greatest influence lies in how they affect conversion. A large number of reviews does not automatically guarantee strong visibility if reader behavior does not support it.

What appears to carry greater weight within the Amazon A11 algorithm is what happens after discovery. Do clicks become purchases? Do purchases become completed reads? Do completed reads become continued engagement with the series? That pattern communicates satisfaction far more clearly than review count alone.

For authors writing interconnected stories, this is especially significant. When readers move naturally from one book to the next, they remain immersed in the narrative world. That continuity sends a powerful signal of a fulfilled promise and a worthwhile experience.

What The Amazon A11 Algorithm Actually Reflects

Despite Amazon’s lack of transparency regarding exact weighting, publishing trends suggest the Amazon A11 algorithm consistently reacts to measurable behavior. Conversion rate reveals how well your packaging aligns with expectation. Sales velocity indicates whether demand is steady rather than fleeting. Series read-through demonstrates narrative cohesion. Customer behavior such as returns or follow-on purchases shows satisfaction. Engagement within subscription models reflects the depth of reader commitment.

What is noticeably absent from that behavioral landscape is any subjective evaluation of artistic ambition. Amazon operates as a data-driven retail platform. It favors products that customers repeatedly show they want.

When your book aligns clearly with readers’ expectations and delivers an experience that encourages continued engagement, visibility increases over time. When alignment falters, exposure adjusts accordingly.

So, Is the Amazon A11 Algorithm Fact or Fiction?

The Amazon A11 algorithm is real. The mythology surrounding it is exaggerated.

The Amazon A11 algorithm is not a shadowy gatekeeper deciding which authors deserve success. It is a feedback mechanism that measures readers’ responses to the content presented to them. That feedback can feel uncomfortable, yet it is also actionable.

You cannot control the algorithm directly. You can, however, control the signals you send through genre clarity, promise precision, series consistency, and strong narrative transitions between books. Those are structural decisions which compound over time in the same way disciplined footwork strengthens a martial artist.

When approached with that mindset, The Amazon A11 algorithm stops being a rumor to fear and becomes a system to understand. It highlights where alignment is working and where it needs refinement. For authors willing to examine their positioning with the same scrutiny they bring to craft, that understanding becomes not a threat, but a tool.

What signal is your book currently sending to readers, and does it match the experience you intend to deliver?

About Susan

Under the pen name Michelle Allums, Susan Watts has authored a young adult urban fantasy titled, The Jade Amulet and is currently writing the sequel. Her short stories are also included in the anthologies Christmas Roses and Forever and Always.

Susan has dedicated over four decades to training in multiple martial arts styles and holds the impressive title of a five-time US Karate Alliance world black belt fighting grand champion. Through her karate school, she is able to impart martial arts and life skills. Susan also incorporates her martial arts knowledge into her writing.

An avid triathlete, she keeps in shape by running, biking, and swimming. She lives in the country with her husband, where they raise animals and enjoy being outdoors. Susan also has three grown children and numerous grandchildren. In addition, she is a CPA and VP of finance for a company in her hometown. 

You can connect with Susan on social media or her website.

Feature picture by Pixabay.

by Laurie Schnebly Campbell

Most of us know somebody who’s done deliveries, right? It could be:

• your neighbor who moonlights for Uber, delivering travelers to the airport.
• Or your college-age nephew who’s lined up a pizza delivery gig.
• Or you, who’ve found the best ways to get various friends & family members to/from various events.

Just about ALL those door-to-door people like improving their efficiency.

• Faster pickups mean better driver ratings.
• More pizzas mean more tips.
• A smoother schedule gives you extra time to enjoy reading and/or writing.

And nobody’s gonna quibble about efficiency being a Bad Thing when the Uber driver knows a shortcut past the traffic jam, or the pizza guy arrives with the deep-dish pepperoni still piping hot. But when it comes to creating a book, efficiency sounds a bit...well, suspicious.

After all, truly creative people are more concerned with the quality of their work than with how many pages they can crank out in 48 hours.

And rightfully so.

So thinking of Efficiency as a way to get things done FASTER might sound like a Bad Thing. But what about a different perspective? Suppose Efficiency is

A way to get things done BETTER.

Okay, that’s worth looking at.

Think of all the steps involved in writing a story. Forget the proofreading and paginating and querying; right now we’re only looking at the creative part. Which usually starts with...

Yep. Creating an idea.

Some people have absolutely no trouble coming up with ideas. They’re veritable fountains of potential plots and compelling characters and scintillating settings, and their only problem is choosing which of their two billion ideas to write first.

Writers who find thinking up ideas harder will often envy their prolific friends, while those prolific writers will often envy the friends who aren’t distracted by Bright Shiny Things and can get through an entire story--beginning to end--without being diverted into tons of other exciting possibilities.

That’s why just about every writer can use some efficiency improvement, when it comes to EITHER creating ideas OR sticking with an idea long enough to finish the book.

What gets in our way?

Finding the right concept is problematic for writers who don’t have oodles of ideas bursting from their brain, same as for those who do. Luckily, though, anyone can spend ten minutes jotting down random answers to questions like “What’d be a cool opening? Who’d make a great character? What would I like to explore?”

It only gets hard when thinking, “Whoa, after jotting down the idea I’ve gotta write the book!”

So don’t think of it that way. Think of this as a practice exercise, which it actually IS when we look at creating a book. Coming up with some random ideas is even easier when there’s a limit: if your answer is limited to 15 words max, you don’t need to worry about broader ramifications. Like:

• “Wait, is such a thing even possible?”
• “It’d need to be a whole series, not a single story.”
• “Would Chris be offended that I used our shared experience?”
• “Somebody’s probably already written this.”

When you’re working with only up to 15 words, you don’t need to worry about such concerns. This is Just. For. Practice. And that takes a lot of the pressure off.

All right, you’ve got an idea or two or five. Now what?

Now it’s time for the next step in improving your efficiency, which <ahem> is NOT sitting down to write.

• “But I have to write for the story to take shape in my brain!”
• “It's the only way I can develop a feeling for these characters.”
• “How can I get to know them before I start writing about ‘em?”

Same as you’d get to know someone you’re thinking about asking to join your decorating committee. Or your cookie-swap brigade. Or your critique group.

You don’t need to issue the invitation right off the bat. You can take some time to observe this person in action. See how they react to things. Find out what matters to them.

And the same is true for your characters.

What matters most.

For a character to be worth writing about, you need to have a handle on their motivation. Motivation is what drives them through the plot (not to mention their entire life), influencing what they do and say and think and feel. Which makes it the next aspect of improving your efficiency--knowing their motivation BEFORE writing Chapter One.

There are steps for that, too, but none of those steps matters without the first idea of “hmm, I think I’d like to see a story about ___.”

And filling in such a blank is all kinds of fun!

You can make it extra entertaining or challenging or non-threatening by answering for a book you already know you’d never do. Say, a romantasy in ancient Egypt when you’re contracted for three more Western thrillers. Or a kids’ story when your favorite kind of book is women’s fiction. Feel free to pick ANY idea, for ANY kind of story, and use that for your answer to this:

Prize-drawing question:

What's some 15-words-or-less idea for a book you’d enjoy reading or writing?

Someone who answers will win free registration to Plotting Via Motivation, my March 2-27 email class on that very thing. On Wednesday evening I’ll have random-org draw a name and post it at the end of the comments, so check back shortly because class will start on Monday!

About Laurie:

After winning Romantic Times’ “Best Special Edition of the Year” over Nora Roberts, Laurie Schnebly Campbell discovered she loved teaching every bit as much as writing...if not more. Since then she’s taught in-person and online workshops including the upcoming Plotting Via Motivation, and keeps a special section of her bookshelves for people who’ve developed that particular novel in her classes. With 60+ titles there so far, she’s always hoping for more.

Feature picture by Unsplash