Generic structure and promotional elements in best-selling online book blurbs: a cross-cultural study

Abstract

This study investigates the generic structure and promotional elements of the\nonline fiction blurbs accompanying the 95 best-selling books from Amazon\nUnited Kingdom and Okuoku Turkey (1999-2011), a company that sells books\nonline that are written in Turkish or translated into Turkish, and adds to the\ngrowing number of investigations into this genre (Kathpalia, 1997; Bhatia, 2004;\nCacchiani, 2007; Gea-Valor, 2007; Gesuato, 2007; Basturkmen, 2009). Based on\nthe findings, a two-level schematic structure (moves and steps) is proposed for\nthe blurbs following Swales (1990). The findings suggest that Amazon UK book\nblurbs have a six-move schematic structure: complimenting the author, book\ndescription, justifying the book by establishing a niche, book promotion, author´s\nbackground and author´s website/blog being the second, fourth and fifth\nobligatory moves. However, Okuoku book blurbs feature a five-move schematic\nstructure with complimenting the author, book description, involving the reader\nin the text, book promotion and author´s background, the second and fourth\nbeing obligatory. Analysis of promotional elements in the corpora reveals that\nonline fiction book blurbs employ the art of advertising through the use of\nfavorable expressions (Bhatia, 2005) and innovative uses of rhetorical strategies\nto persuade the reader to read the book.