That’s how hard it feels to explain to someone what my book is about. It is not that I hate this question; the problem is that answering it is really hard. It’s like trying to push a cow into a tiny box.

Just imagine you wrote a richly detailed fictitious world with more than 80 characters, Seven Kingdoms, and with a version of our world where magic is everywhere, especially in our government, but in a more discreet way.

Then that question arises, and I have to provide an explanation. That’s ok, I can expalain it, but not as fast as the person would like it to be, and not without feeling I’m leaving behind a ton of relevant information about the book. What about the little foretellers Auritts I did not mention? And the Kingdom of Osarus that is located under China and planning to take the top? And Maliccia, the evil empress that slowly drains all of our vital energy/life through the use of magic-powered tech to sustain the life of her cursed body and never die? The list goes on.

That touches on another subject that is a nightmare for authors: write a synopsis.

We authors spend years writing and honing our craft to show things through detailed and involving descriptions. Then we type “The End” or “To be continued” in my case, and the next step is to forget everything we learned about good writing and start basically summarizing the whole book storyline.

For you, dear reader, to have an idea of how hard it is for us authors, we can easily write around 500 words a day—quality words. A synopsis is about 200–250 words, and we take weeks to do that. I’ve never heard about an author who just typed their book synopsis in one take. All of them complain about how hard it is, and it surely is.

So when you ask an author about their book, be sure that the explanation they will provide to you is a very short one, and maybe they will be lucky enough to tell you exactly the aspects of their book you are interested in, compeling you to give them a chance.

In my case, for example, imagine you love robots and hybrid winged beasts, but you did not find them in my book’s synopsis. However, they are in the book. I lost a sale, and you lost a book you would love to read.

So next time you come across an author or their books and read their synopsis or get a brief explanation of what the book is about, be sure you are only getting a tiny fraction of the whole thing and in a boring “telling” format. Take it into consideration when making your purchasing decision about a book, and don’t forget there’s a soul behind all the words in it.

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