Now you just have to convince people to read it.

You’ve never been comfortable blowing your own horn, but you realize that you can’t sell what you don’t promote. With the same level of determination and angst that you put into the book itself, you turn your efforts to the back cover copy:

Armin Rosenblatt should have been satisfied with his life. An up-and-coming professor of particle physics at Harvard University, he’d published a dozen journal articles before his thirtieth birthday. But something was missing. There was, he felt, more to the universe than he could discover via the scientific method.

Shocking his colleagues and his family, Dr. Rosenblatt left academia to attend spiritual retreats throughout the world, and his latent psychic abilities awakened as he immersed himself in a variety of practices. By the time he returned to his home in Connecticut five years later, he could move objects with his mind, heal people telepathically, control the weather, and predict the stock market with 98 percent accuracy. In HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: THE UNDISCOVERED SENSES, he shares his techniques, revealing how you can tap into your own mystical powers.

Are you ready to take the next step in your spiritual development? HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT is an amazing resource, full of wisdom and never-before-explored insights.

A common mistake in back cover copywriting is placing too much emphasis on the awesome qualities of the author or the book. That sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. Readers, above all, want to know how your book is going to benefit them. You won’t get that across unless you make it explicit.

Compare the above book description to a more reader-focused version:

Armin Rosenblatt, an up-and-coming physics professor at Harvard University, shocked his colleagues and his family when he left academia to attend spiritual retreats throughout the world. Certain that there was more to life than he could discover via the scientific method, he spent the next five years studying with various gurus and developing his latent psychic abilities. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: THE UNDISCOVERED SENSES distills the wisdom he’s gained in his travels, revealing how you can tap into your own mystical powers. You’ll learn how to:

• move objects with your mind
• heal people telepathically
• control the weather in your neighborhood (without starting a tsunami somewhere else)
• predict the stock market with 98 percent accuracy
• … and much more

Are you ready to take the next step in your spiritual development? HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT is an amazing resource, full of wisdom and never-before-explored insights.

See the difference? Both versions have something to say about the virtues of the book itself, but the second one spends far more time on what readers get if they avail themselves of the author’s expertise.

Make it about the readers. They’ll be more inclined to turn to the first page when you do.

“None shall pass! Except maybe that trilogy based on Twilight fanfic.”

An aspiring writer recently wrote in to one of my favorite advice columnists, Captain Awkward. The advice seeker loved to write, but lost confidence with every rejection letter. The question: how to persevere when all efforts seemed futile?

Among the Captain’s excellent suggestions was this:

If rejection is killing you, eff the gatekeepers and look into self-publishing your work. My friend Phil did just that, check it out. Chuck Wendig is another person who is creating his own writing career and connecting directly with audiences to sell his work. Catherynne M. Valente wrote short stories in the form of letters to her audience for years … The gatekeepers will take notice of them and come to them eventually with money and contracts and offers of a mainstream audience, but they aren’t waiting for that to do what they want to do. And when the big time comes, they’ll be ready because they’ve already been doing it. Think of what it would mean to a publisher or an agent to take you on as an author with a built-in following who is great at self-promotion and attracting fans? Lots of people can write well. Not everyone can have the hustle to make their work stand out in today’s crowded marketplace. [Emphasis added.]

I like this advice because it presents the potential benefits of self-publishing without downplaying the time and effort involved.

Some authors think of self-publishing as a magical pole that will allow them to vault over the heads of the effing gatekeepers who stand between them and their audience. Those authors are in for a disappointment when they reach the other side. Yes, they’ve bypassed the agents and traditional publishers, but now what? “If you build it, they will come” is a poor business model if no one knows your book exists.

In other words, you still have to do the work. Instead of writing dozens of query letters, you’re looking for an editor who will help you make your manuscript as polished as it can be. You’re hiring other members of your publishing team to help you with cover design and page layout, or you’re learning how to do those things yourself (pro tip: not as easy to do well as it looks). Once your book is available to the masses, you’re pounding the digital pavement every day, trying to connect with readers directly.

None of this is meant to discourage you! There are valid reasons for bypassing the traditional gatekeepers. A hundred agents might reject your manuscript, not because it’s poorly written, but because they guess it will only be of interest to around 600 readers in the world, and major publishers won’t consider it worth the investment. You, on the other hand, might be very happy to sell 600 copies to the people who really want them. You might decide you’re willing to do what it takes to find those people.

In the end, the traditional and self-publishing routes share certain features in common. There is an opportunity for success. There is a risk of failure. There is work to be done.

The good news is, if you’ve already written an entire book, you’re no stranger to hard work.

So do your homework. Review your options. And then, whatever option you choose, give it your very best shot.