I have a question about blurbs

[Guest]

I'm working on a rough one for my book one right now. It has five POV's.

Three of them are the main story, while the other two are side plots (one character does also participate in the main story).

Should I just focus on the three that are the main, and leave the two side plots out?

[Rebekah]

From what I've learned it's the three MCs that you include in the blurb, not the side plots. You also don't have to include every POV character in the blurb. I'm still researching but I've found a bunch of blurb advice on the YouTube channel called Book Ends. It's two literary agents explaining the entire querying process, including blurbs.

[David]

Try thinking of the blurb this way: you just got on an elevator and came face to face with your top choice for publisher. You have to get them interested enough to buy your manuscript before they get off at the next floor.
What will you say?

(In movies, this is called an elevator pitch)

[Clara]

That's what I'd recommend, and I'm an editor who helps with blurbs as well as manuscripts. I do fantasy and romance, so multi-POVs are very common in the novels I work with, and I always recommend focusing the blurb on either the most important main character or a small number of POVs. Five would likely be too many. You have limited space, so you need to focus on what is most important.

The last novel I did had 5 POVs but one was clearly the "main" main character, and the whole blurb was just about her. For a romance novel that spends a similar amount of time with both main characters, I typically recommend spending the same amount of time on each in the blurb.

If you're doing three, consider a sentence for each and using the rest of the space to talk more generally about the story, especially if it's fantasy and you have worldbuilding to cover. You want your target readers to be able to see what sub-genre(s) you're in as well as recognizing that you have interesting/relatable characters. Of course, you could also just do a third of the blurb for each, but only if the specific things you have to say about the characters will communicate the genre and overall plot/conflict/stakes.