There is an easy way to make your Amazon book description really attract attention, with HTML

Hidden deep in Amazon’s KDP help section is a page titled, Supported HTML for Book Description.

No, this might not sound very exciting, and for those who have no idea about HTML, perhaps a bit daunting.

However, it is extremely useful and offers a very simple means of making your book description stand out and attract attention.

For those unfamiliar with HTML, it is a code or tag that can be used to enhance text characteristics. Don’t panic, though, as I will show you below how easy it is to enhance your Amazon book description.

One note first. This will only work when you modify your book description from your KDP dashboard.

Select your book, and go to your book details page. This method will NOT work if you edit your book description from Author Central.

It is possible to use HTML in Author Central edits, but you need more knowledge of HTML than is covered in this article.

Let’s change a bland book description, to something much better, in less than five minutes.

Firstly, here is my old book description.

Life has the habit of delivering its twists at the most unexpected times.

For Bonnie, his life had been lived, and the bittersweet memories of his wife, along with the never-ending sorrow of losing his son so young remain with him, but they were now ebbing away slowly with the passing of the years. His days of love, warmth and tenderness well past and all that was left were his last few quiet years to grow old. Alone, yet content.

What he had done, he had done and what had happened, had. All that remained was to live out the rest of his life in a new place, far away from his checkered past. His days passing with the regularity that an old man desires and deserves. Until the dark day arrives that signals an impending end to his new found life, and with it, all sense of hope.

In facing mortality, Bonnie resorts to using his crusty exterior and bravado to hide the frailty and fear he feels within himself – until he is presented with stark realities beyond his understanding and is forced to come face to face with his own prejudices and beliefs.

In meeting Danny and Angeline, Bonnie begins to reshape his thoughts about his acceptance of those he had habitually admonished, and of the bigoted life he has lived. While Charlie and his daughter Beatrice realign his set concepts of how he had habitually rushed to judge people too quickly.

However, it is only when Bonnie meets Madeleine that the most unexpected eventuality turns his hard-held beliefs, and his very set views about life, people, and love, on their head.

Add a few .html tags, and see the difference

Now, I am going to add a new attention-grabbing headline, and a few review quotes, and make the last line a bold attention grabber simply by adding some HTML tags.

<h2>When it comes to love, it’s never too late …</h2>

<i>..anticipated a sad story of death….but just the opposite…</i>

<i>I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In fact, I hated to see it end.</i>

<i>Wow, some people have the ability to make you feel the story through their words..</i>

Life has the habit of delivering its twists at the most unexpected times.

For Bonnie, his life had been lived, and the bittersweet memories of his wife, along with the never-ending sorrow of losing his son so young remain with him, but they were now ebbing away slowly with the passing of the years. His days of love, warmth and tenderness well past and all that was left were his last few quiet years to grow old. Alone, yet content.

What he had done, he had done and what had happened, had. All that remained was to live out the rest of his life in a new place, far away from his checkered past. His days passing with the regularity that an old man desires and deserves. Until the dark day arrives that signals an impending end to his new found life, and with it, all sense of hope.

In facing mortality, Bonnie resorts to using his crusty exterior and bravado to hide the frailty and fear he feels within himself – until he is presented with stark realities beyond his understanding and is forced to come face to face with his own prejudices and beliefs.

In meeting Danny and Angeline, Bonnie begins to reshape his thoughts about his acceptance of those he had habitually admonished, and of the bigoted life he has lived. While Charlie and his daughter Beatrice realign his set concepts of how he had habitually rushed to judge people too quickly.

However, it is only when Bonnie meets Madeleine that the most unexpected eventuality turns his hard-held beliefs, and his very set views about life, people, and love, on their head.

<b>Read One Last Love, only if you are looking for a very different, yet very touching romance story.</b>

You can see the code I have added at the beginning and end of the lines of text I want to modify. <b> makes a line bold. <i> makes a line italic. <h2> was a surprise, as it makes a line extra bold, and because of Amazon’s page formatting, it also becomes orange.

The most important part here, and what Amazon does not explain in their HTML page is that you MUST close these tags correctly. You can see from my example above that I open a line with <b> and then at the end I added a forward slash. </b>. If you don’t add this forward slash, it won’t work. If you want to modify your book description, you can simply copy and paste the codes from my example above.

The result?

Now, what did these small HTML tags do? Here is the result below.

When it comes to love, it’s never too late …

..anticipated a sad story of death….but just the opposite…

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. In fact, I hated to see it end.

Wow, some people have the ability to make you feel the story through their words..

Life has the habit of delivering its twists at the most unexpected times.

For Bonnie, his life had been lived, and the bittersweet memories of his wife, along with the never-ending sorrow of losing his son so young remain with him, but they were now ebbing away slowly with the passing of the years. His days of love, warmth and tenderness well past and all that was left were his last few quiet years to grow old. Alone, yet content.

What he had done, he had done and what had happened, had. All that remained was to live out the rest of his life in a new place, far away from his checkered past. His days passing with the regularity that an old man desires and deserves. Until the dark day arrives that signals an impending end to his new found life, and with it, all sense of hope.

In facing mortality, Bonnie resorts to using his crusty exterior and bravado to hide the frailty and fear he feels within himself – until he is presented with stark realities beyond his understanding and is forced to come face to face with his own prejudices and beliefs.

In meeting Danny and Angeline, Bonnie begins to reshape his thoughts about his acceptance of those he had habitually admonished, and of the bigoted life he has lived. While Charlie and his daughter Beatrice realign his set concepts of how he had habitually rushed to judge people too quickly.

However, it is only when Bonnie meets Madeleine that the most unexpected eventuality turns his hard-held beliefs, and his very set views about life, people, and love, on their head.

Read One Last Love, only if you are looking for a different, yet very touching romance story.

Lastly, I would recommend that you edit your book description in a text editor, and not directly online in your KDP dashboard.

So copy your book description, paste into an editor, make your changes, then copy and paste it back into your book details on KDP and republish.

And if you make a mistake, or something is amiss, don’t worry. Just wait for your book to become live (usually only 6-12 hours) and try again.

Once you get the idea of how to use these HTML tags, it only takes a few minutes to make your book descriptions stand out from the crowd and help attract book buyers’ attention.