What does a summary need?
It needs to be short. Consider The Fellowship of the Ring by Tolkien--it has 3 paragraphs (about 7 sentences) as a summary even though it is over 430 pages long. These are not overly complex long sentences, either. The summary for A Game of Thrones is also about 7 sentences despite being over 700 pages. A summary should ideally be 2-4 paragraphs long and no more than 25 sentences. The more succinct you can be with your plot, the better--as long as it meets minimum standards.
It needs to be well-edited and clear. Authors with typos in their summaries usually have typo-ridden books that are difficult for readers to wade through. Summaries that are written so only the author or someone who has already read the book understand them are also not helpful.
It needs to let the reader know the (correct) genre if that isn't evident. For example, in The Fellowship of the Ring, the summary lets readers know the book is going to be an epic fantasy because it talks about magical elements and a journey. Be careful, however, if you feel you need to blatantly state "this is a historical fantasy." Many times authors who state what their book is don't know exactly what a "historical fantasy" is. I recently read a summary that claimed the book was a historical fantasy in the first sentence, but the book was set in a fictional world and not a real, historical earth setting. An example of a "historical fantasy" would be Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which takes place on earth in an alternate reality of the past, where magic occurs during the 19th century. There are many other genres, such as urban fiction or paranormal romance, that need authors to be aware of what they entail. The reverse of this is my own sci-fi romance mashup and sci-fi cozy mashup serials--I had at least one person say that these weren't sci-fi because they rely on arranged marriages and some "old-fashioned" societal rules--despite being set on another planet in another star system with advanced technology. I think people forget that many sci-fi books and movies use a technologically advanced but societal archaic theme--think about Star Wars, which basically incorporates swords and magic into sci-fi or Dune, which also has a technologically advanced society based on arranged marriages.
What to keep out of a summary?
Avoid words that reflect opinions of your book like "award-winning," "new," and "gripping." Opinions shouldn't be in the summary. There are places on your Amazon book page where you can add paid review information. It is expected that you, the author, believes your book should win an award and is a superb contribution to literature--your own opinions about your work don't belong anywhere on your sales page. Using "new" is slightly ridiculous because your book is not going to be "new" forever.
Avoid plot details. Your added a bunch of really cool details and characters to your book, so of course you want to talk about them. The problem is that you are going to bog down your summary with things that are not necessary to conveying the plot. The Fellowship of the Ring summary mentioned above is a good example. It tells the reader who the main bad guy is and who the main good guy is. Are there other important characters in the book? Of course. But the whole trilogy is about Frodo getting to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and Sauron trying to stop him. In a romance summary, you should only have the main male and female mentioned. In other fiction, if there is a group of good guys/bad guys, you could say something like "Frodo Baggins and his fellow travelers" or "Luke Skywalker and those who gather around him" or "Ponyboy Curtis and his friends." In the summary for A Game of Thrones, which switches viewpoints between many people, the main characters are "the Starks of Winterfell."
Avoid giving away the end of the story. Some indie authors do give away their work for free, but a summary of your work for the purpose of marketing it (free or not) should never contain the ending. Most readers aren't going to read a long version if you give them access to an abridged version of your story.
Avoid letting AI write the summary without any oversight. I get a lot of scam e-mails talking about my books. In this age of AI--which can read reviews, your summary, and other aspects of your book that you have talked about online--many people use technology to make their work easier. The problem is that AI does awful jobs of actually summarizing stories--I find them easy to pick out. If you struggle writing a summary, AI might be able to give you the groundwork, but if you don't know what you are doing, you won't be able to fix it appropriately. There are some services that will give you free or cheap professional reviews complete with a summary. It is better to use these services than to attempt having AI do it for you.
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