Sample: Book-description rewrite

Rehearsal sample on our own demonstration book. The “before” is a typical first-draft description we wrote for the demonstration; it is not from a real author.

Before (author’s draft)

The Cartographer’s Debt is a fantasy story about Ysolde Ferrant, a mapmaker in the city of Varre. She owes the Guild of the Salt Reach a lot of money. The Guildmaster, Brannoch, says she can pay off her debt if she makes a map of the Unmapped Mile, a part of the coast that keeps changing. With the help of her apprentice Ottilie and two brothers, she tries to map it and discovers its secret. This book has themes of honesty, family and courage. It will appeal to fans of fantasy.

After (our rewrite)

The sea forgives a liar once. Never twice.

In the harbor city of Varre, mapmakers are trained from childhood to draw the shore as it is, not as they wish it. Ysolde Ferrant was the worst apprentice of her year at everything except the one thing that matters: looking.

She can also lose everything with a single letter.

The Guild of the Salt Reach has called in her debt: four hundred crowns she will never have. Guildmaster Brannoch offers a way out. Bring him a true chart of the Unmapped Mile by the new moon, and the debt is paid. Fail, and the Guild takes her workshop, her license to draw, and Ottilie, the orphaned apprentice who has become the closest thing Ysolde has to family.

No one has ever charted the Unmapped Mile. Its coves shift overnight. Its sandbars wander. Ships that sail by its maps run aground on reefs that were not there the day before.

Because the Guild does not really want a map. It wants a toll road. And the truth Ysolde finds on that shifting coast may cost far more than four hundred crowns to put on paper.

The Cartographer’s Debt is a short, atmospheric fantasy of salt, ink and stubborn honesty. Clean read: no explicit content; mild peril.

(Shortened here for the sample. The delivered version, with a formatted copy for KDP, is in the Book Listing Package sample.)

What changed and why

• Opens on the book’s own hook line instead of “is a fantasy story about.”
• Names the stakes in concrete terms: four hundred crowns, the new moon, the workshop, Ottilie.
• Shows the mystery instead of naming it: shifting coves and wandering sandbars, not “a part of the coast that keeps changing.”
• Keeps the twist hidden. The draft gave away that she “discovers its secret”; the rewrite turns it into a question.
• States the content level plainly for readers choosing a clean read.