How to write like a Pirate, Get readers, and other inspirational crap

Know you Audience. Covers, Tags, and Descriptions.

Sell yourself. Be confident!

Your description is the first place you actually get to do that with your writing. I also recommend going to the book aisle and doing some research. Some do's and don'ts include actually teasing your WHOLE PLOT(from start to finish with the end included). You don't have to do a full synopsis on the whole thing but do more than a couple sentences. You're not being mysterious when you leave out important things like the main character's name or the plot hook, you're being vague in a bad way.

Do's.

Reveal your main character's name and age range. You don't have to come out and say they are 12 or 45 but saying they are in high school or a professor at a university goes a long way. The setting is also important. Saying something as simple as 'Magic school' or 'airport' will change the age and genre the story takes place in and give your readers a hint of what they are getting into. It helps trust me. 

Village, city, skyscraper, town hall, hut, president, king, superhero, idol, and elf are some examples of good words to place your setting in the description. Also many stories have similar plot descriptions and you may get brushed aside if you sound just like the rest but the other book has a few more reads. Look at any werewolf love story, and it includes something about the alpha's mate and the main character being the alpha or the mate.

"A normal girl suddenly finds herself as the mate of a powerful alpha, what will she do next?" is too cliché to work as part of the teaser description. It is bad... soooo bad. Not only can that be a given from the cover and title, but it gives the reader no incentive to read and no information about the main characters, plot, time frame, conflict, or anything remotely important to someone flipping through books for something that catches their eye. Focus on the part of your story that makes it stand out.

I can make a better teaser of the same book by writing it like this: "Janice Lightway, is a history professor who teaches at south high school. The janitor has a secret and she never expected it to change the way she has to use her kick boxing experience when a wild chase takes them from one end of the world to the next. All in search of an artifact that will shift the balance in an age-old war between vampires and werewolves. With more lives on the line than she wishes to count, she must make a choice between the man she loves, and the one who saved her life time and time again. It's a choice that may haunt her and will impact the lives of thousands of innocents."

Keep in mind I'm no Tolkien-level professional, but I'd much rather read the second one than the first. Werewolves may have a big role and you can make your mark just by citing your book as a werewolf story in the tags and having a good cover. Remember, that the main character is more important than the fact they are werewolves or connected to them. Yes, werewolves and their social structure of mate and alpha's may be the key plot, but sell yourself better than the next guy. Sure, I took some liberties since they aren't just two people in love, but this is the kind of book I'd write. I'd try to write "A better one with my own spin", throwing together things people weren't expecting.

This how I would sell myself. But my audience of that book are "People who have read a bunch of werewolf books and want a werewolf book that brings something new and fresh to the equation." I'd pick a cover with a cute girl to look like the surprisingly hot history teacher, gritty dark tones, maybe fade in a picture of a wolf. But also remember that you want people to stick around after they open your book so don't do everything perfect at the first and have no story or chapters to back it up.

Now when writing things in the description section of your books I've picked out some key phrases you should avoid at all costs.

In your Description several of the biggest "Don'ts" and their translations are: