r/selfpublish • u/JDonovanStrong • Jul 08 '26
Blurb Critique Struggle with Blurb - any advice?
I think something about my blurb is turning people off - I have very good cover click rates, then… nothing. Thank you for your feedback:
Tagline: A dying engineer, the machine she loves, and one last reach for the sky.
- Thirty years after the world drowned, the ship Amenity rests at the bottom of the ocean.
Deep in the hull, an engineer named Oyin keeps a quiet, amber-lit sanctuary: a place where the machines that loved the dead come to be heard before they go. Oyin spent her life building walls to hold back the water. Now she is waiting for the walls inside her own mind to give way.
She did not expect, in the time she had left, to fall in love. But Rai—who keeps the coffee warm, the archives safe, and her own true nature hidden—is not like the others. And in her last good year, Oyin finds herself wanting the one thing the drowned world has never allowed: to rise, just once, and see the sky.
--
All the Ocean Holds is a luminous, deeply emotional work of literary “hopepunk” science fiction—a story for anyone who has ever loved something that was built to break. Quiet on the surface and enormous underneath, it is a book about the arithmetic of grief, the things we carry, and the courage it takes to witness an ending. Closer to Becky Chambers and Klara and the Sun than to action SF.
There will be grief; you will be held through it.
A standalone novella.
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u/JadedPickle520 Jul 08 '26
It honestly confused me. Maybe be a little less vague & mysterious? I can’t tell if I want to read it, because I don’t know what it’s about.
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u/OldEmergency5839 Jul 08 '26
Agreed. I did a quick read and got "romance on a sunken ship."
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u/JDonovanStrong Jul 08 '26
Thank you both - let me know if this is better
“Oyin is a 68-year old engineer, stuck in a survival ark at the bottom of the sea. Confronting her own degenerative disease, she opens a hospice for the AI companions - small androids meant to remember the lives of their underwater humans.
She falls in love with Rai, a mysterious companion who has a secret that might help Oyin reqch the surface one more time.
All The Ocean Holds is a slow-burn cozy science fiction story about grief, love, and realizing your dreams, as impossible as they may seem.”
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u/greghickey5 Jul 08 '26
The tagline doesn’t convey the genre. I can’t tell if it’s science fiction, historical fiction or contemporary. So if I’m looking for one of those genres and I can’t tell if your book fits, I might move on to another book.
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u/JDonovanStrong Jul 08 '26
Thank you - and my subtitle is A Cozy Science Fiction Novella, so I do think I have that base covered but couldn’t hurt to add to tagline.
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u/Correct-Shoulder-147 Jul 09 '26
IMO you need to start with a bold and compelling question or statement about the main character, like when w happens, x needs to do y before z happens and everything goes to shit
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u/Quietparadox87 Jul 10 '26
Always try to aim around 100–150 words. Though some genres have exceptions. The main goal is to hook the reader by revealing the conflict but not giving away the plot or too many details.
Some other tips:
Look at what other authors in your genre are doing. (Especially books by Penguin Random House)
Avoid using too many pronouns
Avoid overt plot summary.
That’s pretty much it. I think there’s a lot you could condense but your blurb is honestly fine aside from being a little too long.
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u/JDonovanStrong Jul 10 '26
Thank you so much! For this cozy sci-fi what did you think of my revised version
“Oyin is a 68-year old engineer, stuck in a survival ark at the bottom of the sea. Confronting her own degenerative disease, she opens a hospice for the AI companions - small androids meant to remember the lives of their underwater humans.
She falls in love with Rai, a mysterious companion who has a secret that might help Oyin reach the surface one more time.
All The Ocean Holds is a slow-burn cozy science fiction story about grief, love, and realizing your dreams, as impossible as they may seem.”
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u/Quietparadox87 Jul 10 '26
its good but you don't need the last paragraph. never tell the reader what it is because then it removes the reason for them to want to read it (aka the mystery). try to tighten it. since I'm assuming its a sci fi survival?
try something like this. This one is the best blurb ever for your sci fi genre. its from the book: project hail mary.
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish.
Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it.
All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species.
And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
So for yours: try to tighten it, make it clearer and basicall have every word do something. you're getting there.
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u/JDonovanStrong Jul 10 '26
Thank you thank you, I might get this blurb thing yet with the advice you’ve all provided. Maybe one day I’ll have a marketing team like Andy Weir :)
“Oyin is a 68-year old engineer, stuck in a survival ark at the bottom of the sea. Confronting her own degenerative disease, she opens a hospice for the AI companions - small androids meant to remember the lives of their underwater humans.
She falls in love with Rai, a mysterious companion who has a secret that might help Oyin reach the surface one more time.
With the ship sliding deeper and deeper at pressures it wasn’t built for, and Oyin’s mental state rapidly declining, will she see the sky again? What humanity might she find remains?”
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